On Sunday morning, Russian soldiers encircled Ukraine’s major cities, preventing residents from fleeing the attack and shooting on civilian targets.
Russia’s airstrikes and increased shelling outside of Kyiv, the capital city, continued to target numerous cities.
According to local accounts, the sound of air raid sirens could be heard in almost every part of Ukraine.
The Yaroviv International Peacekeeping and Security Center in the vicinity of Lviv, approximately 10 miles away from the Polish border, was struck about 6 a.m. Sunday by eight missiles launched by Russian aircraft, according to reports from Ukraine.
According to authorities, at least 35 people have been reported dead and 134 were injured.
For the last several decades, the United States has backed the IPSC, a vast military complex that includes a training facility for troops, mostly for peacekeeping operations.
Efforts to get food, water, and medication into the important port city of Mariupol in Ukraine’s south – which has been ravaged by constant Russian bombs – were thwarted Saturday by another day of savage shelling.
According to the mayor’s administration, the siege has claimed the lives of more than 1,500 people in Mariupol, including those attempting to bury the deceased in mass graves, which has been disrupted by the bombardment.
In an effort to establish a ceasefire accord, talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials broke down again on Saturday.
Russia has warned the United States and its allies that it would see shipments of weapons to Ukraine as legitimate targets if the US follows through on its commitment to transfer an extra $200 million in arms.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin has put forward his conditions for a ceasefire during a meeting with the leaders of France and Germany on Saturday: Ukraine must drop its NATO membership and adopt a neutral status; recognise Russian sovereignty over Crimea, and demilitarize; he also demanded that Ukraine drop its plans to join NATO and adopt a neutral status.
After the abduction of Melitopol’s mayor on Friday, Ukraine’s president, Voloymyr Zelensky, accused Russia of launching “a new stage of terror” and compared Russian forces to “ISIS terrorists.”
“Ukraine will stand this test. We need time and strength to break the war machine that has come to our land,” Zelensky said during his address on Saturday.
Zelensky said that Russia would need to bomb and murder the people of Kyiv in order to capture the city ahead of an expected Russian attack on the capital. According to the president, 2 million people have already left the city.
“They will come here only if they kill us all,” he said. “If that is their goal, let them come.”
Shelling by Russian troops prompted the evacuation of hundreds of civilians from Peremoha (approximately 12 miles northeast of Kyiv) on Saturday, killing seven people, including a child, Ukraine’s defense ministry said.
Ukraine has accused Russia of obstructing humanitarian routes and shooting on people, despite Moscow’s claim that it would set up humanitarian corridors.
About 13,000 people have evacuated throughout Ukraine thus far, according to Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. Only nine of the 14 agreed-upon routes were operational on Saturday.
A Ukrainian official reported that the Russian military seized a humanitarian assistance convoy that was on its route to Mariupol and halted another. In an attempt to construct a land corridor to Crimea, Russia has taken control of the city’s eastern suburbs and is increasing its assault on the port, which it took from Ukraine in 2014.
The city of Mariupol has been without running water and power for more than a week. Residents are dying from a shortage of medicine and depleting heating pipes for drinking water, according to relief organization Doctors Without Borders.
In Italy, a bus transporting migrants from Ukraine toppled and collapsed. About 50 people were injured in the incident, at least one of them was dead.
On Saturday, the streets and a park in Irpin, a suburb approximately 12 miles northwest of downtown Kyiv, were littered with dead bodies.
When the Russians invaded, Zelensky sought to rouse his people to fight back.“We do not have the right to let up our defense, no matter how difficult it may be,” he said.
After 17 days of Russian assault, Zelensky estimated that 1,300 Ukrainian troops had been killed.
According to the Ukrainian government, tens of thousands of people have been slain, including at least 79 children. According to a UN agency, 2.5 million people have left the nation, with more than 1.5 million of them crossing into Poland.
Several dozen medical institutions have been targeted by Russian troops, according WHO.
After a more difficult fight than predicted against the tenacious Ukrainian resistance, Russian troops look to be struggling, but the relentless Russian attacks may be wearing down their outgunned and outnumbered men.
