The enormous Kremlin convoy that had been delayed outside Kyiv began to split up and circle the capital as Russia’s conflict in Ukraine reached its third week, officials warned, while unrelenting attacks on a port city amounted to “war crimes.”
Satellite photographs revealed that the 40-mile convoy that had been creeping towards Kyiv for weeks amid complaints of food and fuel shortages had been redeployed. Some armored vehicles were spotted in the northern suburbs, while others went into the woods and took up fire positions.
The dispersal happened after Ukrainian military drone footage showed Kremlin tanks being blown up in an ambush on their route to the city where President Volodymyr Zelensky had been defiantly holed down since the aggressive invasion began.
Armed civilians had surrounded the capital in large numbers ahead of an expected onslaught, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, as the number of refugees that fled Ukraine grew to 2.3 million Thursday.
Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko visits a checkpoint of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues on March 6, 2022.
Klitschko stated, “Every street, every house… is being fortified.” “Even persons who never expected to change their attire in their life now find themselves in uniform with machine guns in their hands.”
Katya, 14, was recovering in a hospital outside of Kyiv after her family attempted to evacuate the city in a car and was ambushed by gunfire from a roadside woodland.
According to her mother, Nina, the girl was shot in the hand, and her father, who was in surgery, had been shot in the head and had two fingers blown off.
Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, met with Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, in Turkey to discuss a 24-hour cease-fire, but the two men failed to make any progress during their first meeting of the war.
Ukraine has refused to yield, and Russia has stated that it would not back down in its alleged efforts to destabilize the former Soviet republic and realign it with Moscow.
Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine’s strategic port of Mariupol resumed Thursday, despite Lavrov’s dismissal of outcry over civilian losses as “pathetic shrieks” and denials of an invasion.
During a 10-day siege of the city, about 1,300 people were killed. The unwillingness to evacuate the city’s 430,000 population, along with attacks on humanitarian aid providers, resulted in “outright panic,” according to Zelensky.
In a video speech, Zelensky claimed, “They have a clear directive to hold Mariupol prisoner, to insult it, to repeatedly bomb and shell it.”
Officials reported that many trapped in the chilly burnt-out city were without heat, electricity, or phone service and were starving for food and gasoline, while dead were thrown into mass graves.
The situation in Ukraine as of March 10, 2022.
Hunger-stricken citizens assaulted one another for food, bought vegetables on the illicit market, and stole gasoline from automobiles. Meat and medicine have long been depleted in the stores.
An airstrike on a maternity facility on Wednesday killed three people, including a child, and injured 17 others, according to world leaders.
“They intend to exterminate Mariupol’s population.” They aim to starve them to death, according to Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. “It’s a crime against humanity.”
A satellite image of the Russian position outside Berestyanka, Ukraine.
“The world’s eyes are on this war and what Russia has done in terms of aggression and horrors,” said Vice President Kamala Harris, who was in Poland on the other side of the border.
“I don’t have a place to live anymore.” That’s why I’m relocating,” Aleksander Ivanov explained as he pushed a cart loaded with belongings down a deserted street flanked with derelict structures.
“It’s no longer there.” “A mortar hit it,” the exhausted-looking man explained.
Russian equipment and troops deployed in Ozera, Ukraine.
Zelensky offered a strong warning to Moscow as Russia’s economy continued to deteriorate.
In his nightly address, he declared, “You will undoubtedly be tried for participating in war crimes.”
“And then, without a doubt, you will be despised by Russian citizens — everyone whom you have been fooling on a daily basis for many years, when they see the results of your falsehoods in their wallets, in their dwindling opportunities, in the stolen future of Russian children.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that his country would “overcome” the economic turmoil, but acknowledged that sanctions have posed “some challenges.”