Ukrainian school bombed as Russia presses attack
G7 nations vow to end dependence on Russian energy
More than 60 people were feared dead yesterday after a Russian bomb flattened a school being used as a shelter, Ukrainian officials said, while Moscow’s forces pressed their attack on defenders inside Mariupol’s steel plant in an apparent race to capture the city ahead of Russia’s Victory Day holiday.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “appalled” by the reported school bombing on Sunday in the eastern village of Bilohorivka and called it another reminder that “it is civilians that pay the highest price” in war.
Authorities said about 90 people were sheltering in the basement. Emergency crews found two bodies and rescued 30 people, but “most likely all 60 people who remain under the rubble are now dead”, Serhiy Haidai, Governor of Luhansk province, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and others have warned that Russian attacks would only worsen in the lead-up to Victory Day today, and some cities declared curfews or cautioned people against gathering in public. Russian President Vladimir Putin may want to proclaim some kind of triumph in Ukraine when he addresses the troops on Red Square.
“They have nothing to celebrate,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US ambassador to the United Nations, told CNN yesterday. “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 2000 Ukrainian fighters were making what appeared to be their last stand was the only part of the city not under Russian control.
The last women, children and older civilians who were sheltering with the fighters in the Azovstal plant were evacuated on Sunday. Buses carrying more than 170 evacuees from the steelworks and other parts of Mariupol arrived in the Ukrainianheld city of Zaporizhzhia yesterday, UN officials said.
The Ukrainian defenders in the steel mill have rejected deadlines set by the Russians for laying down their arms. Captain Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Ukrainian Azov Regiment, a unit holding the steel mill, said the site was targeted by warplanes, artillery and tanks.
Lieutenant Illya Samoilenko, another member of the Azov Regiment, said there were a couple of hundred wounded soldiers at the plant but declined to reveal how many ablebodied
fighters remained.
On the economic front, leaders from the Group of Seven industrial democracies pledged to ban or phase out imports of Russian oil. The G7 consists of the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Japan.
The United States also announced new sanctions against Russia, cutting off Western advertising from Russia’s three biggest TV stations, banning US accounting and consulting firms from providing services, and cutting off Russia’s industrial sector from wood products, industrial engines, boilers and bulldozers.
Zelenskyy released a video address marking the day of the Allied victory in Europe 77 years ago, drawing parallels between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the evils of Nazism. The black-and-white footage showed Zelenskyy standing in front of a ruined apartment block in Borodyanka, Kyiv. Zelenskyy said that generations of Ukrainians understood the significance of the words “Never again”, a phrase often used as a vow not to allow a repeat of the
Holocaust’s horrors.
Elsewhere, on Ukraine’s coast, explosions echoed again across the major Black Sea port of Odesa. At least five blasts were heard, according to local media.
The Ukrainian military said Moscow was focusing its main efforts on destroying airfield infrastructure in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Satellite photos show Russia has put armoured vehicles and missile systems at a small base in the Crimean Peninsula.
The most intense combat in recent days has taken place in eastern Ukraine. A Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northeast near Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, is making “significant progress”, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington thinktank. However, Rodion Miroshnik, a representative of the pro-Kremlin, separatist Luhansk People’s Republic, said its forces and Russian troops had captured most of the eastern city of Popasna after two months of fierce fighting.