MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian airstrike on a Mariupol maternity hospital that killed three people brought condemnation down on Moscow on Thursday, with Ukrainian and Western officials branding it a war crime, while the highest-level talks yet yielded no progress toward stopping the fighting.
Emergency workers renewed efforts to get food and medical supplies into besieged cities and get traumatized civilians out.
Ukrainian authorities said a child was among the dead in Wednesday’s airstrike in the vital southern port of Mariupol. Seventeen people were also wounded, including women waiting to give birth, doctors, and children buried in the rubble.
Images of pregnant women covered in dust and blood dominated news reports in many countries and brought a new wave of horror over the 2-week-old war sparked by Russia’s invasion, which has killed thousands of soldiers and civilians, shaken the foundations of European security and driven more than 2.3 million people from Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Russian leaders that the invasion will backfire on them as their economy is strangled. Western sanctions have already dealt a severe blow to the economy, causing the ruble to plunge, foreign businesses to flee — including, on Thursday, investment bank Goldman Sachs — and prices to rise sharply.
“You will definitely be prosecuted for complicity in war crimes,” Zelenskyy said in a video address. “And then, it will definitely happen, you will be hated by Russian citizens — everyone whom you have been deceiving constantly, daily, for many years in a row, when they feel the consequences of your lies in their wallets, in their shrinking possibilities, in the stolen future of Russian children.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed such talk, saying the country has endured sanctions before.
″Just as we overcame these difficulties in the previous years, we will overcome them now,” he said at a televised meeting of government officials. He did, however, acknowledge the sanctions create “certain challenges.”
Millions more have been displaced inside the country. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Thursday that about 2 million people — half the population of the capital’s metropolitan area — have left the city, which has become virtually a fortress.
“Every street, every house … is being fortified,” he said. “Even people who in their lives never intended to change their clothes, now they are in uniform with machine guns in their hands.”
Bombs fell on two hospitals in a city west of Kyiv on Wednesday, its mayor said. The World Health Organization said it has confirmed 18 attacks on medical facilities since the invasion began.
Western officials said Russian forces have made little progress on the ground in recent days. But they have intensified the bombardment of Mariupol and other cities, trapping hundreds of thousands of people, with food and water running short.
Temporary cease-fires to allow evacuations and humanitarian aid have repeatedly faltered, with Ukraine accusing Russia of continuing its bombardments. But Zelenskyy said 35,000 people managed to get out on Wednesday from several besieged towns, and more efforts were underway on Thursday in eastern and southern Ukraine — including Mariupol — as well as in the Kyiv suburbs.
The Mariupol city council posted a video showing buses driving down a highway. It said a convoy bringing food and medicine was on the way despite several days of thwarted efforts to reach the city.
