Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses the nation from a square in the capital Kyiv, March 11, 2022

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Friday’s Coverage: Russia’s “Terrorist State” Tightens Siege of Mariupol

UPDATE 1855 GMT:

Volnovakha in eastern Ukraine has been completely destroyed by Russian attacks, according to Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

He said fighting continues to prevent a Russian encirclement of the town.

In the Kyiv area, Makariv — a village 30 miles west of the capital, has suffered significant damage from Russian strikes.

Apartment complexes, schools, a kindergarten, a grocery store, a cultural center, and a medical facility have been struck.

The Adonis-Makariv Medical and Diagnostic Center was set on fire, with its windows blown out and the street littered with debris from the destroyed north facade.

UPDATE 1850 GMT:

Ukraine’s intelligence service says seven civilians were killed when Russian troops fired at an evacuation convoy in the Kyiv region.

The civilians were leaving the village of Peremoha.

The services said, “After the attack, the occupiers forced the remnants of the column to turn back to Peremoha and are not letting them out of the village.”

UPDATE 1845 GMT:

Ukraine’s security service claims it has intercepted phone calls establishing that Russian troops near the city of Kharkiv were ordered to shoot at civilians, including children.

The UN High Commission for Human Rights has documented at least 170 people, including five children, killed in the Kharkiv region as of Tuesday.

UPDATE 1425 GMT:

Lindsey Hilsum notes apparent Russian targeting of food supplies —- similar to Moscow’s tactics in Syria —- in shelling and bombing.

I saw a food warehouse hit in #Mykolaiv on Monday, and another at #Brovary north of #Kyiv attacked today. No other targets in the area, and both direct hits. Suggests Russians are targeting food supplies.

UPDATE 1420 GMT:

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said that any negotiations with Russia will have to begin with a ceasefire

The President said there has been a limited advance with Russian and Ukrainian negotiators beginning to discuss concrete topics rather than exchanging ultimatums.

Zelensky said some small Ukrainian towns have ceased to exist as a result of the war.

UPDATE 1005 GMT:

More than 2,000 people have protested the detention of Mayor Ivan Fedorov in Russian-occupied Melitopol in southern Ukraine.

Russian forces seized Fedorov on the pretext that he is involved in “terrorism”.

Melitopol, in a corridor along the Black Sea, was seized last week but residents have openly demonstrated against the Russian occupation.

In a video message late Friday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the abduction of Fedorov, a “mayor who bravely defends Ukraine and the members of his community”.

UPDATE 0820 GMT:

Ukraine’s State Emergency Services say five people, including two children, were killed by Russian bombing of a residential building in the village of Slobozhanske, outside Kyiv.

UPDATE 0805 GMT:

Another Russian businessman has had his super-yacht seized under international sanctions.

Italian finance police impounded the “SY A”, belonging to coal and fertilizer tycoon Andrey Melnichenko.

The €530 million ($578 million) yacht was in storage in Trieste. At one time, it was the 10th-largest yacht in the world.

Melnichenko was among Russian businessmen sanctioned by the European Union on Wednesday. The decision noted that he was among 37 business leader who met with Vladimir Putin soon after the February 24 invasion.

UPDATE 0750 GMT:

Mariana Vishegirskaya, among the pregnant women escaping Russia’s bombing of a maternity ward in Mariupol on Wednesday, has given birth to a daughter.

Vishegirskaya was pictured struggling down the stairs of the damaged hospital.

On Friday, she was shown in a hospital bed holding her newborn daughter Veronika and looking on as her husband Yuri held the baby.

Trying to deny their attack on women and children, Russian officials had pressed the lie that Vishegirskaya — a beauty blogger — was a “crisis actor” faking the assault.

Twitter responded by removing tweets from the Russian Embassy to the UK branding Vishegirskaya “Fake” in large red letters.

The UN emphasized that the hospital was clearly identifiable and operational on Wednesday, rebuffing Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s lies that there were no patients or staff and that far-right Ukrainian fighters were using the facility as a base.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Even as Russia widens its shelling and airstrikes and tries to encircle the capital Kyiv, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy tells the nation, “We are moving toward victory.”

Zelenskiy continued to rally Ukrainians against the 17-day Russian invasion with a series of video messages on Friday. He said the conflict was at a “strategic turning point”, as Vladimir Putin’s troops struggled to occupy territory outside a corridor in southern Ukraine on the Black Sea.

The Ukraine military expanded on Zelenskiy’s remarks with the assessment that Russian forces were trying to surround Kyiv by fanning out to the west and north and approaching Brovary to the east. US and UK intelligence agencies supported the analysis, noting that troops and armor in a 60-km (37-mile) convoy northwest of Kyiv — stagnant for days — had begun to disperse into towns and forests.

According to UK military intelligence, the bulk of Russia’s forces are about 25 km (15.5 miles) from the center of Kyiv.

The Ukrainian military said there was fierce fighting for control of the main highway leading into the capital, and Russian missiles were striking Velyka Dymerka just outside the city limits.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said about 2 million people, half the population of Kyiv, had left. The rest were ensuring “every street, every house is being fortified”: “Even people who in their lives never intended to change their clothes, now they are in uniform with machine guns in their hands.”

Russia Strikes Western Ukraine

Frustrated on the ground and concerned about Western military support of Ukraine, Russia expanded its airstrikes into the west of the country on Friday.

Targets included Lutsk, where four Ukrainian troops were killed in strikes on the city’s airfield. A civilian also reportedly was slain.

Galina Padalko, a former city councillor, said, “People here are now scared.” But she stoically compared the situation with that in eastern Ukraine, “The Russians bombard Kharkiv 100 times a day. Compared to that, this wasn’t as bad.”

The Russians also bombed Ivano-Frankivsk in the west, and they hit Dnipro in east-central Ukraine for the first time, threatening displaced Ukrainians and humanitarian organizations who have moved to the city on the Dnieper River.

One person was killed in Dnipro, with strikes damaging an area near a chemical plant, destroying a shoe factory, and breaking the windows of a kindergarten.

In the village of Marhalivka, a family of 11 were among evacuees from Kyiv who were killed by a Russian strike.

On Saturday morning, air-raid sirens sounded in Kyiv, Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, Cherkasy, Lviv in the west, and the Sumy region in the northeast. Two oil depots near Kyiv, in Vasylkiv and Kryachy, were reportedly on fire after Russian attacks.

Intense fighting is reported near Mykolaiv, just north of the Black Sea corridor in southern Ukraine.

430,000 “Desperate”, 1,500+ Killed in Besieged Mariupol

There was no sign of relief from the Russian siege of Mariupol, at the eastern end of the 250-km strip (155-km) strip along the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, on Friday.

A convoy of eight trucks with aid unsuccessfully tried to reach the 430,000 population.

The Russians have blocked efforts to evacuate more than 200,000 civilians, breaking ceasefires on three occasions to shell evacuees. The Mayor said there has been shelling “every 30 minutes”, with Russian attacks on civilian sites including a children’s hospital and maternity ward.

At least 1,582 people have been killed, according to the city council. Heat, water, and electricity are cut off, and food is scarce.

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Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk repeated in a video message that authorities are still trying to send vital supplies and evacuate people to Zaporizhzhia to the west.

Yulia, who fled Mariupol on 3 March, said her mother-in-law was making a “really dangerous” journey, to a tower far from her home, to stay in contact.

She said she was OK but the attacks don’t stop. There are many corpses on the street and nobody buries them. They lie there for days. Sometimes, utility services collect them and bury them all together in one huge grave.

Russia’s Disinformation Show Fails

A series of countries dismantled Russia’s disinformation campaign at the United Nations on Friday, pointing to Moscow’s record on the use of chemical weapons.

Russia had called a Security Council meeting, after a days-long effort lying that the US had “bioweapons labs” in Ukraine.

Other delegations pointed out the reality. Like many countries, Ukraine has biological research facilities for medicine and public health. The US Pentagon has advised Ukrainian authorities on bio-defense for the facilities, with safety and security measures to prevent biological agents being stolen.

They then cited Russia’s use of the nerve agent novichok inside and outside the country, including in March 2018 in Salisbury, England, and Moscow’s support for the Assad regime’s numerous chemical attacks in the 11-year Syrian conflict.

A UN spokesperson in Geneva spoke of credible reports of Russians using cluster munitions, including in populated areas. Liz Throssell noted that the indiscriminate use may amount to war crimes.