In his nightly video address to his people
late Wednesday, Zelenskyy also called on NATO to provide Ukraine with
“effective and unrestricted” support to Ukraine, including any weapons it needs
to fend off the invasion. His office said he will address the alliance’s summit
on Thursday by video.
Zelenskyy’s impassioned call for more
support capped a day in which Russian forces continued to bombard Ukrainian
cities, as Ukraine’s outgunned military waged intense battles to keep the
capital and other key locales from falling.
Russian forces have brought death and
destruction to a large swath of Ukraine over the past four weeks, but they
appear to have stalled in many places in the face of fiercer-than-expected
Ukrainian resistance. NATO estimated Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian
soldiers have been killed since the war started on Feb. 24.
Here are some key things to know about the
conflict:
WHAT IS HAPPENING ON THE GROUND?
Kyiv is still under fire. Shelling rocked
the capital city again on Wednesday, with rockets slamming into a shopping mall
and high-rise buildings in the Sviatoshynskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts.
The destruction was extensive and the
ensuing fires injured four residents, city officials said.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said the Russian
bombardment has killed 264 civilians in the capital, including four children.
As he spoke to reporters in Kyiv park, explosions and loud gunfire echoed in
the background.
Wednesday’s shelling claimed the life of
another journalist. Oksana Baulina, a Russian reporter for the independent
Russian news outlet The Insider, was killed in a Kyiv neighborhood.
Russian forces also bombed Chernihiv in
northern Ukraine, the governor said Wednesday, destroying a bridge that had
been critical for evacuations and aid deliveries.
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN MARIUPOL?
Mariupol, a strategic port city on the Sea
of Azov, has become a vivid symbol of the war’s savage destruction.
Some 100,000 of Mariupol’s prewar
population of 430,000 remain trapped in the city, Zelenskyy said. They are
subject to relentless Russian bombardment from the sea and skies, and
struggling to survive without heat, food or clean water.
Zelenskyy accused the Russians of seizing a
humanitarian convoy that was trying to get food and supplies to residents.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 11 bus drivers and four rescue
workers were being held captive.
Zelenskyy said what’s happening in Mariupol
is “inhumane.”
WHAT HAS THE AP DIRECTLY WITNESSED OR
CONFIRMED?
Firefighters sprayed water on a smoldering
residential building that was demolished by Russian shelling in western Kyiv
early Wednesday. As the sound of fighting rumbled in the distance, fire service
spokesperson Svitlana Vologda told the AP that the fire was the largest since
the war began, in terms of requests for firefighters to respond.
Kyiv was shaken by a constant barrage of
shelling Wednesday and plumes of black smoke rose from the western outskirts of
the city. At dusk, air raid sirens wailed over the capital as attacks
continued.
In the seaside city of Odesa, fondly known
as the Pearl of the Black Sea, street musicians played under cloudless skies as
people fled.
Odesa has so far been spared the worst of
Russia’s onslaughts, but a major attack on Ukraine’s biggest port city seems
inevitable. Anxiety is growing. The streets are stacked with sandbags and
barricades. Tearful families waved goodbye to loved ones at the train station.
“I can’t understand what has happened,”
said Igor Topsi, a musician.
WHAT ARE UKRAINIAN REFUGEES SAYING?
Some of the more than 3.5 million people
who have fled Ukraine have shared nightmarish stories of death, destruction and
the painful separation from loved ones.
Natalia Savchenko, 37, arrived in Medyka,
Poland, on Wednesday and said the situation in the eastern city of Kharkiv is
“terrible.” She said there is no electricity or water, and children are not
being given medicine or food.
“People are being killed day and night.
They are shooting with everything they have,” she said.
At the train station in Przemysl, Poland,
Kateryna Mytkevich said her family was trapped in Chernihiv for three weeks and
hoped the war would pass them by — but then “bombs began to fall.”
“Our children are dying. My son had to stay
in Chernihiv, I could only take my daughter with me. It hurts a lot.” said
Mytkevich, 39.
Volodymr Fedorovych, 77, also fled
Chernihiv, saying: “There was nothing, there wasn’t even bread.” He said bread
was brought in every three days, and on one day, he walked away from the bread
line to get some tea when a bomb fell without warning.
“Sixteen people died and 47 were taken by
ambulance, some of them without arms and legs. Horrible. There were one hundred
people in that queue,” he said. Ukrainian officials have said that 10 people
were killed in a bombing of a bread line last week.
WHAT ABOUT DIPLOMATIC DEVELOPMENTS?
Zelenskyy called called on people around
the world to come “to your squares, your streets” to stand with Ukraine and
against the war on Thursday, which will one month since Russia invaded.
He said late Wednesday in his nightly video
address to his people that the war “breaks my heart, the hearts of all
Ukrainians and every free person on the planet.” He called for people to
visibly show their support for Ukraine.
He also called on NATO to provide Ukraine
with “effective and unrestricted” support, including any weapons the country
needs to fend off the invasion.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken said the U.S. made the formal determination that Russia has committed
war crimes in Ukraine after a careful review of public and intelligence
sources.
Blinken said there have been numerous
credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting
civilians. He said Russian forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools,
hospitals, shopping centers, and ambulances “leaving thousands of innocent
civilians killed or wounded.”
Blinken said the U.S. would work with
others to prosecute offenders. The International Criminal Court at The Hague is
already investigating.
The announcement came as U.S. President Joe
Biden headed to Brussels, where he was expected to roll out new sanctions against
Russia and coordinate more military assistance for Ukraine. Biden described the
possibility that Russia could use chemical weapons in Ukraine as a “real
threat” and said it’s an issue that world leaders will discuss at the NATO
summit.
WHAT IS RUSSIA’S MILITARY PLANNING?
A senior U.S. defense official said
Wednesday that Russian ground forces appear to be setting up defensive
positions about 15 to 20 kilometers (9 to 12 miles) outside Kyiv, as they
continue to make little to no progress toward the city’s center.
The official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity to discuss military assessments, said it appears Russian forces are
no longer trying to advance into Kyiv and are instead turning priorities to the
Donbas region, in what could be an effort to prevent Ukrainian troops from
moving west to defend other cities.
In an ominous sign that Moscow might
consider using nuclear weapons, a senior Russian official said the country’s
nuclear arsenal would help deter the West from intervening in Ukraine.
HOW MANY RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN TROOPS HAVE
DIED?
An exact figure has been hard to pinpoint,
as official numbers have not been regularly released by either country.
NATO estimated Wednesday that 7,000 to
15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed — the alliance’s first public estimate
on Russian casualties since the war began. The official spoke on condition of
anonymity under ground rules set by NATO.
Back on March 2, Russia said nearly 500
soldiers had been killed and almost 1,600 wounded.
The most recent figure for Ukraine’s
military losses came from Zelenskyy on March 12, when he said that about 1,300
Ukrainian servicemen had been killed. -AP
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
0 comments:
Post a Comment