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Economic Times | 17 Mar, 2022 | 06.53AM IST
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy invoked 9/11 during an urgent appeal Wednesday to the U.S. Congress for more weapons to stem the Russian assault. U.S. President Joe Biden announced an additional $800 million for Ukraine’s military and said Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “war criminal.”
In the encircled city of Mariupol, a Russian airstrike destroyed a theater where hundreds of people were sheltering. Many people were buried in the rubble, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement, though the number of casualties wasn’t clear.
Missiles and artillery slammed into high-rise apartment towers in Kyiv, setting buildings ablaze and sending smoke over the capital and its suburbs.
- Ten people were killed while standing in line for bread in the northern city of Chernihiv, the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office said.
- Satellite images from the Maxar space technology company showed Russian self-propelled artillery and multiple-rocket launchers deployed on the outskirts of Chernihiv, their barrels and tubes aimed at the city.
- Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter that the attack on the theater in Mariupol is a “horrendous war crime.” Maxar’s satellite imagery from Monday showed the word “children” written in large white letters in Russian in front of and behind the building.
- The Russian defense ministry denied bombing the theater or anywhere else in Mariupol on Wednesday.
- In central Kyiv, shrapnel from an artillery shell smashed into a 12-story apartment building early Wednesday, wiping out the building’s top floor and starting a fire. Emergency services reported two victims from the blaze, without specifying if they were killed or injured.
- Fighting continued in Kyiv’s suburbs, depriving thousands of heat and clean water.
- A Russian airstrike destroyed multiple residential apartments in the town of Markhalivka southwest of the capital, authorities said.
- Russia now occupies the city of Ivankiv, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Kyiv, and controls the surrounding region on the border with Belarus, local officials said.
- Relentless strikes pounded the northeastern city of Kharkiv close to the Russian border, but Ukrainian forces continued to thwart Russia’s incursion into the heart of the city, city officials said.
- Powerful explosions also thundered in the region around Kherson, a strategic port near the Black Sea. Ukrainian military forces have dealt a punishing blow to Russian air assets stationed at the airport in Kherson, which Russian troops seized early in the war, the Ukraine military’s General Staff said late Wednesday.
- Satellite photos by Planet Labs PBC analyzed by The Associated Press show helicopters and vehicles on fire at the air base after what Ukraine said was its strike on Tuesday.
- There were also explosions near a train station in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, home to several power stations.
- The region “is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe,” Zelenskyy’s office warned.
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