Dozens feared dead in school blast
G-7 leaders draw on V-E Day anniversary to undercut Putin
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — More than 60 people were feared dead Sunday after a Russian bomb flattened a school being used as a shelter, Ukrainian officials said, while Moscow’s forces kept up their attack on defenders inside Mariupol’s steel plant in an apparent race to capture the city ahead of Russia’s Victory Day holiday.
U.N. 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.
Authorities said about 90 people had been taking shelter 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.
Russian shelling also killed two boys, ages 11 and 14, in the nearby town of Pryvillia, he said.
Luhansk is part of the Donbas, the industrial heartland in the east that Russia’s forces are bent on capturing.
As Moscow prepared to celebrate the 1945 surrender of Nazi Germany with a Victory Day military parade 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 his country’s flag at its 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.”
The newly appointed acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Kristina Kvien, posted a photo of herself at the American Embassy, trumpeting plans for the eventual U.S. return to the Ukrainian capital after Moscow’s forces abandoned
their effort to storm Kyiv weeks ago and began focusing on the capture of the Donbas.
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 on Red Square.
“They have nothing to celebrate tomorrow,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told CNN.
Russian forces struggled
to complete their takeover of Mariupol, which has been largely reduced to rubble. The 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 over 170 evacuees from the steelworks and other parts of Mariupol arrived Sunday in Zaporizhzhia, U.N. officials said.
The Ukrainian government has reached out to international organizations
to try to secure safe passage for the defenders.
On the economic front, leaders from the Group of Seven developed democracies pledged to ban or phase out the import of Russian oil, as they met with Zelenskyy for online talks to stress their support and to display unity among Western allies on V-E Day, which marks Nazi Germany’s surrender in 1945.
Cutting out Russian oil supplies “will hit hard at the main artery of (President Vladimir) Putin’s economy and deny him the revenue he needs to fund his war,” the G-7 countries, which include the U.S., Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Japan, said in a statement.
Casting a look back at World War II, the leaders stressed unity in their resolve that Putin must not win.
“We owe it to the memory of all those who fought for freedom in the Second World War, to continue fighting for it today, for the people of Ukraine, Europe and the global community,” they said.
President Joe Biden’s call with the G-7 leaders and Zelenskyy lasted about an hour.
The U.S. also announced new sanctions against Russia, cutting off Western advertising from Russia’s three biggest TV stations, banning U.S. accounting and consulting firms from providing services, and cutting off Russia’s industrial sector from wood products, industrial engines, boilers and bulldozers.
Trudeau met with Zelenskyy and made a visit to Irpin.
Zelenskyy also met with the German parliament speaker, Barbel Bas, in Kyiv to discuss further defense assistance.
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 footage showed Zelenskyy standing in front of a ruined apartment block in Borodyanka, a Kyiv suburb.
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 horrors of the Holocaust.