DEATH AT Russians unleash a hypersonic missile 9 000 MPH
RUSSIA yesterday admitted unleashing a 9,000mph hypersonic missile as Vladimir Putin stepped up his onslaught on Ukraine.
The Kinzhal – or Dagger – obliterated an underground weapons dump.
The fearsome missile, which can be launched from a jet fighter or warship, travels up to 1,250 miles at 10 to 12 times the speed of sound and can dodge air-defences.
It is the first time Russia has confessed to using the currently unstoppable high-precision weapon.
Last night security expert Dominika Kunertova warned that Russia was retaliating at moves by Britain and its allies to arm Ukraine.
She said: “It’s a signal to the West, because Putin is annoyed that the West is daring to send all these weapons.” As the war enters a fourth week:
RUSSIAN SPECIAL FORCES reached the centre of besieged Mariupol and bitter building-to-building fighting was taking place.
STARVING CIVILIANS numbering 300,000 remain trapped in the blitzed southern port in hellish scenes, with unburied bodies strewn in the streets.
A FIFTH Russian general was killed near the southern city of Kherson, Ukrainian officials said.
THE CORPSES of Russian soldiers are being moved from Belarus back to their homeland in the dead of night to avoid attracting attention, it is claimed.
were struggling to relieve Mariupol as President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Putin to engage in direct talks.
The Kremlin said the hypersonic missile attack, believed to have happened in the early hours yesterday, hit a munitions depot in Deliatyn, 380 miles west of Kyiv.
Aerial footage released by the Russian military shows a huge explosion sending rubble and debris into
UKRAINE REINFORCEMENTS
the air. People can be seen fleeing as smoke billows from the site.
The blast came hours before grieving Ukrainian soldiers honoured two comrades killed in the cruise missile attack on Yavoriv military training base near the Polish border last Sunday.
They died along with scores of other volunteers, allegedly including three
British former special forces troops.
The two fallen soldiers were carried through the town in coffins followed by more than a dozen soldiers armed with assault rifles, many in tears.
Secret police and soldiers patrolled the village as nervous locals refused to talk about the fact that war has spread this far west.
Air strikes aimed at dismantling Ukraine’s military supply chain have led to an increasingly intrusive search for Moscow saboteurs and spies there.
Armed men, some soldiers, police or volunteers at checkpoints insist on searching cars and checking identity papers every 10 miles. A couple from Kramatorsk, Donetsk, who fled east a week ago said: “It’s like the war has followed us here.”
Ukraine claims 14,400 Russian soldiers have been killed.
British defence chiefs believe Russia has burned the bodies of thousands of its war dead using mobile crematoriums.
Others may have been buried in mass graves on the border between the two countries.
Moscow’s Defence Ministry insists it has lost fewer than 500.
But web videos appeared to show Russian military ambulances ferrying corpses to Belarus for onward passage to Russia.
Employees at a hospital in the Belarusian city of Homel said 2,500 bodies had already been shipped out.
The general staff of Ukraine’s army claimed that the Russian Lieutenantgeneral Andrei Mordvichev died when Ukrainian forces hit an airfield near Kherson. If true, he is the fifth Russian general to be killed.
In Mariupol, intense street fighting was hampering efforts to rescue 1,300 people, including woman, children and babies, trapped in the basement of a bombed theatre.
Ukraine says 300,000 are trapped in the decimated city which has no electricity or water and major food and medical shortages.
Mayor Vadym Boychenko said: “Our forces are doing everything they can to hold their positions in the city but the forces of the enemy are larger than ours, unfortunately.”
Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said: “Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the earth.
“There isn’t a small piece of land in the city that doesn’t have signs of war.”
Ukrainian and Russian forces battled over the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.
Destroyed
Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said: “One of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe is actually being destroyed,”
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, said the nearest forces that could assist Mariupol were already struggling against overwhelming force or were at least 60 miles away.
“There is currently no military solution to Mariupol,” he said.
“That is not only my opinion, that is the opinion of the military.”
A mortar attack in the town of Makariv near Kyiv killed seven.
A further 13 died queuing outside a bakery in the town on March 7 but Russia denies targeting civilians.
President Zelensky remained defiant and said: “It’s time to meet, it’s time to talk, it’s time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine.
“Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be such that you will need several generations to recover.”
Ukrainian high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh won an emotional gold at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Belgrade, Serbia.