Dozens feared dead in school attack
About 90 people were sheltering in facility that was flattened by Russian bomb on Saturday
ZAPORIZHZHIA, UKRAINE Scores of Ukrainians were feared dead Sunday after a Russian bomb flattened a school where about 90 people were taking shelter in the basement, while Ukrainian fighters held out inside Mariupol’s steel plant as Moscow’s forces apparently raced to capture the city ahead of Russia’s Victory Day holiday.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “appalled” by the reported school bombing Saturday in the eastern village of Bilohorivaka and called it another reminder that “it is civilians that pay the highest price” in war.
Emergency crews found two bodies and rescued 30 people at the school after the bombing, according to the governor of Luhansk province, part of the eastern industrial heartland known as the Donbas.
“Most likely, all 60 people who remain under the rubble are now dead,” Gov. Serhiy Haidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Russian shelling also killed two boys, ages 11 and 14, in the nearby town of Pryvillia, he said.
As Moscow prepared to celebrate the 1945 surrender of Nazi Germany with a Victory Day military parade on Monday, a lineup of western leaders and celebrities made surprise visits to Ukraine in a show of support.
U.S. first lady Jill Biden met with her Ukrainian counterpart. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised the Canadian flag at the country’s embassy in Kyiv. And U2’s Bono, alongside bandmate The Edge, performed in a Kyiv subway station that had been used as a bomb shelter, singing the 1960s song “Stand by Me.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and others warned in recent days that Russian attacks would only worsen in the lead-up to Victory Day, and some cities declared curfews or cautioned people against gathering in public. Russian President Vladimir Putin is believed to want to proclaim some kind of triumph in Ukraine when he addresses the troops at Red Square.
“They have nothing to celebrate tomorrow,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told CNN. “They have not succeeded in defeating the Ukrainians. They have not succeeded in dividing the world or dividing NATO. And they have only succeeded in isolating themselves internationally and becoming a pariah state around the globe.”
Russian forces struggled to complete their takeover of Mariupol, which has been largely reduced to rubble.
The sprawling seaside steel mill where an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters were making what appeared to be their last stand was the only part of the city not under Russian control.
The last of the women, children and older civilians who were taking shelter with the fighters in the Azovstal plant were evacuated Saturday. Buses carrying more than 170 evacuees from the steelworks and other parts of Mariupol arrived in the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia on Sunday, UN officials said.
Capt. Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Ukrainian Azov Regiment, a unit holding the steel mill, said the defenders “are under constant shelling,” adding that Russian ground troops tried to storm the plant — a claim Russian officials denied in recent days — and lay mines.
Palamar reported a “multitude of casualties.”
On the economic front, G7 leaders pledged to ban or phase out imports of Russian oil. The G7 consists of the U.S., Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Japan.
Elsewhere, on Ukraine’s coast, explosions echoed again across the major Black Sea port of Odessa. The Ukrainian military said Moscow was focusing its main efforts on destroying airfield infrastructure in eastern and southern Ukraine.
They have only succeeded in isolating themselves internationally and becoming a pariah state around the globe.
LINDA THOMAS GREENFIELD UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO THE UN