KYIV (UKRAINE) : The fate of hundreds of Ukrainian civilians in Mariupol was unclear early Thursday after Russian forces bombed a theater where they had been sheltering from fighting over the southern port city.
Mariupol has been the target of relentless shelling by Russian forces seeking to advance along Ukraine’s southern coast.
Satellite images from before the bombing showed the word “children" written twice, in Russian, on either side of the building in the city. The entrance to a bomb shelter under the theater was blocked by rubble when the building partially collapsed, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the regional military administration in the eastern region of Donetsk. Former governor Sergiy Taruta said on Thursday the bomb shelter had remained intact, and there were survivors.
A resident of Mariupol who escaped the city told a Ukrainian TV channel there had been more than 1,000 people in the theater before it was bombed, sheltering in an underground bunker, in the main auditorium and on stage.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of deliberately attacking the theater.
“The death toll is still unknown," Mr. Zelensky said in an overnight speech. “The building was destroyed."
A spokesman for Russia’s Defense Ministry on Thursday said the country’s armed forces had destroyed 46 Ukrainian military targets in the past day, including an S-300 anti-aircraft system, an arms depot in the western city of Rivne and three Bayraktar drones. The ministry denied its forces conducted an airstrike on the theater, blaming Ukraine’s forces for blowing it up as a “bloody provocation."
The bombing came after Mr. Zelensky, in a virtual address to members of Congress on Wednesday, pressed the U.S. to provide more weapons and increase economic pressure on Russia. Mr. Zelensky said he was grateful to the U.S. for its assistance thus far, but said the war isn’t over.
“Russia’s war crimes do not stop. The world must finally officially recognize that Russia has become a terrorist state,’’ he said.
Mr. Zelensky addressed the German parliament Thursday, saying the nation should take the lead in helping Ukraine, after propping up Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime through trade for years. Germany should set up an airlift for humanitarian aid to his country, among other initiatives, he said.
“A new wall is again rising in the middle of Europe…separating freedom from bondage," he added, alluding to the Berlin Wall that split the German capital during the Cold War.
Mr. Zelensky’s remarks follow similar appeals to the European Union, the U.K. House of Commons and Canada’s parliament.
President Biden pledged an additional $800 million in security assistance to Ukraine following Mr. Zelensky’s remarks, bringing the total to $1 billion over the past week.
“We’re going to give Ukraine the arms to fight and defend themselves through all the difficult days ahead," Mr. Biden said at the White House.
Mr. Biden also told reporters he thought Mr. Putin was a war criminal, a sign of escalating rhetoric during the conflict. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow considered Mr. Biden’s comment “unacceptable and unforgivable."
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Slovakia has agreed to send an S-300 air-defense system into Ukraine, if the U.S. can arrange to replace it with a Patriot missile battery, a senior Slovak official said. The S-300 is a Soviet-style missile battery designed to intercept incoming missiles and destroy jet fighters.
Sending such a system into the country would mark a step up in the effort by North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to help Ukraine shoot Russian war planes and missiles out of the sky.
Russian forces have increasingly resorted to bombing residential areas and civilian infrastructure in an effort to wear down Ukrainian resistance. More than 100 children have been killed in three weeks of conflict, said Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova in an interview before the bombing of the theater in Mariupol.
Ms. Venediktova met on Wednesday with Karim Khan, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, which has opened an investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine.
Moscow has largely not commented on combat losses and said its campaign was progressing.
Nearly a dozen people were killed while standing in line outside a bakery in the northern city of Chernihiv. Mr. Zelensky said Russian forces fired at civilians.
In the western city of Rivne, officials raised the death toll from an attack on a television tower earlier this week, saying 21 people were killed, up from nine fatalities on the day of the strike.
Since Russian troops began their assault on Ukraine on Feb. 24, they have seized territory in the south of Ukraine but been stopped short around the capital, Kyiv, and elsewhere. Russia aimed for a quick capture of Kyiv, and its forces thrust deep into Ukrainian territory up to the city’s outskirts in the north, west and east in the first days of the war.
But that offensive stalled out amid poor planning and logistics, and unexpectedly stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces armed with Western-provided antitank and antiaircraft missiles.
Ukrainian forces said they were consolidating gains after launching a counteroffensive on Wednesday to drive Russian troops back around Kyiv and other areas.
Ukrainian media footage of the aftermath of the strike on the Russian-held airport near Kherson on Wednesday showed rows of burning Russian military trucks and an airfield strewn with debris.
The counteroffensive by Ukrainian armed forces “radically changes the parties’ disposition," tweeted Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser who is negotiating a possible cease-fire with Russia.
Before the theater bombing in Mariupol, an adviser to the mayor said that the city’s death toll was significantly higher than the 2,357 casualties officially confirmed, putting it closer to 20,000.
“It is currently impossible to determine the exact number of victims," said Petro Andryushchenko. Survivors are crammed into basements without food, reduced to drinking water from the drains, he added.
Corpses lie in the street, as heavy shelling prevents residents from burying them, he said. “Death is everywhere."
Russian forces have also trapped several hundred people in a hospital in Mariupol, according to Mr. Kyrylenko, the Donetsk regional leader. A convoy of food, water and medicine destined for the city has been held up for several days by Russian forces near Berdyansk.
Some 20,000 people managed to flee Mariupol in their own vehicles on Tuesday, Mr. Zelensky said. More than three million people have fled Ukraine since the war began, according to United Nations figures.
Mr. Zelensky’s office said late Wednesday that Ukrainian forces freed the mayor of the southern city of Melitopol, who was kidnapped from his office earlier this month by Russian troops who put a plastic bag over his head.
The Ukrainian push elsewhere in the south reversed some early Russian gains of the invasion, officials said. Ukrainian troops pushed Russian forces far from the regional capital of Mykolayiv, which they had been threatening, according to the regional governor Vitaly Kim.
Still, cease-fire discussions continue. Mr. Podolyak, who is participating in daily talks with Russia, said there was room for compromise despite “fundamental contradictions."
The main area of progress between the two sides concerns addressing mutual security concerns, a Ukrainian official said. Ukraine, ready to recognize that membership of NATO is unlikely anytime soon, is considering dropping that in exchange for binding security guarantees from its Western partners and Russia, the official said.
That, however, is only one item on the agenda, and there is little scope for compromise on Russia’s demands that Kyiv recognize the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Moscow and the self-proclaimed independence of the Russian-backed statelets in Donetsk and Luhansk.
“I don’t see a breakthrough—at this stage both sides believe they can win the war," the official said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that negotiations with the Ukrainian side are continuing on Thursday but there was not any progress to report yet. “Work continues. When there is [progress], we will let you know," he said.
He accused the Ukrainian side of dragging their feet during the negotiations. “Our delegation...is ready to work around the clock," Mr. Peskov said. “Unfortunately, we do not see a similar zeal from the Ukrainian side."
The Kremlin previously said a neutral status similar to those of Sweden or Austria could be a model for Ukraine. Mr. Putin said that Moscow doesn’t intend to occupy Ukraine and is ready to discuss the country’s neutral status during talks with Kyiv. Ukrainian negotiators have rejected the idea of such a status, seeking clear security guarantees.
“The appearance of Russian troops near Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine is not connected with the intention to occupy this country," Mr. Putin said in televised remarks before meeting with government officials.
Mr. Putin sought to justify the war by repeating allegations refuted by Ukraine and the West that Kyiv was looking to acquire nuclear and biological weapons.
“We were simply left with no options to peacefully resolve problems that arise through no fault of ours," Mr. Putin said, adding that all goals of the military campaign would be achieved. “We will reliably ensure the security of Russia and our people."
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