Russian forces squeeze Kyiv, surround Mariupol

Russian forces stepped up the pressure on Kyiv yesterday and pummelled civilian areas in other Ukrainian cities, including hospitals in Mykolaiv and a mosque in Mariupol, the port city already devastated by two weeks of siege.Russian strikes destroyed the airport in the town of Vasylkiv last morning, about 40km south of Kyiv, while an oil depot was also hit and caught fire, the mayor said.The northwest suburbs of the capital, including Irpin and Bucha, have already endured days of heavy bombardment while Russian armoured vehicles are advancing on the northeastern edge.AFP reporters in Kyiv said yesterday there was a column of thick black smoke rising from the eastern suburbs, but no sign yet of ground forces moving into the outskirts.Other cities have been utterly devastated following Russia’s invasion of its neighbour on February 24, with civilians targeted in what the United Nations warned could amount to war crimes.The southern port city of Mariupol is facing what Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called “the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet”, with more than 1,500 civilians dead in 12 days.Russian forces shelled a mosque there where 80 civilians were sheltering, the foreign ministry said yesterday, without specifying the time of the attack or casualties.A new attempt was planned yesterday to help civilians evacuate the city, via a humanitarian corridor to Zaporizhzhia, around 200km to the north east, Kyiv said. Meanwhile an AFP reporter in the southern city of Mykolaiv said a hospital in the northern district of Ingulski came under fire, while heating is out in the area, forcing many residents to flee.“They shot at the civilian areas, without any military objective,” said the hospital’s head, Dmytro Lagochev, adding: “There’s a hospital here, an orphanage and a ophthalmological clinic.”The United Nations estimates that 2.5mn people had fled Ukraine since the invasion, most of them to Poland, in the worst refugee crisis since World War II.As Russia widens its bombardment and talks between Moscow and Kyiv seemingly go nowhere, pleas by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for Nato to intervene have grown increasingly desperate.Washington and its EU allies have sent funds and military aid to Ukraine.US President Joe Biden yesterday authorised an additional $200mn in weapons and other assistance for Ukraine, the White House said.The decision brings total US security aid provided to Ukraine to $1.2bn since January 2021, and to $3.2bn since 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine, according to senior administration officials.In a memorandum to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Biden directed that up to $200mn allocated through the Foreign Assistance Act be designated for Ukraine’s defence.The funds can be used for weapons and other defence articles from the Defence Department’s stock, as well as military education and training to help Ukraine against invading Russian forces.The situation in Mariupol remains “desperate”, according to Doctors Without Borders, with no water or heating – and running out of food.“Hundreds of thousands of people... are for all intents and purposes besieged,” Stephen Cornish, one of those heading the medical charity’s Ukraine operation, told AFP in an interview.“Sieges are a medieval practice that have been outlawed by the modern rules of war for good reason.”Zelensky said they were trying to arrange evacuations from besieged cities but Russian forces were disrupting efforts.In Kharkiv, in the east, doctors at a hospital described spending two days pumping ash from the stomach of an eight-year-old child whose home was blasted by a Russian missile.“He still has cinders in his lungs,” Dima Kasyanov’s doctor told AFP.The attacks on civilians prompted a new flurry of warnings on Friday that Russia is committing war crimes.“We are really heading towards an unimaginable tragedy,” warned Cornish, of Doctors Without Borders, insisting that “there is still time to avoid it, and we must see it avoided”.In a video address released yesterday, Zelensky appealed to Russian mothers to prevent their sons from being sent to war.“I want to say this once again to Russian mothers, especially mothers of conscripts. Do not send your children to war in a foreign country,” he said.Zelensky said more than 12,000 Russian troops had been killed in the invasion. US estimates put the number of Russian fatalities at 2,000 to 4,000 while Moscow’s only official toll, announced last week, said 498 Russian troops had been killed.