Status: 03/20/2022 12:45 p.m
Russia is stepping up attacks on Ukraine – according to its own statements, again with hypersonic missiles. In Mariupol, an art school was apparently bombed, where hundreds of people took refuge.
According to Ukrainian sources, Russian forces have bombed an art school in the besieged city of Mariupol, where several hundred people have taken refuge. The building was destroyed in the attack on Saturday, and people were still trapped under the rubble, the city administration said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation that the siege of Mariupol would go down in history because of war crimes by Russian troops. “Doing to a peaceful city what the occupiers did is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come,” he said.
Russian troops continue to fight Ukraine unabated
Jens Eberl, WDR, daily news at 09:55 a.m., March 20, 2022
Reports on deportations
The strategically important port city in southeastern Ukraine has been the target of heavy bombing for weeks. According to the Mariupol city administration, numerous residents were taken to Russia against their will. Their Ukrainian passports had previously been confiscated. The Russian armed forces have already deported more than 1,000 residents from the east of the city in this way, said the head of the Donetsk regional administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko.
According to Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, residents were taken to the Russian cities of Tomsk, Vladimir and Yaroslavl. This information cannot be verified independently.
conflicting parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body.
Hypersonic missile is said to have destroyed fuel storage
Another hypersonic missile was deployed, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The Kinzhal (Dagger) missile was fired from the Crimea peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, at a fuel depot owned by the Ukrainian military, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
During the night and on Sunday morning, several Ukrainian military infrastructure targets were attacked. Cruise missiles were fired from ships in the Black and Caspian Seas. Among other things, a repair shop for military vehicles was hit in Nizhyn. A training center for foreign fighters who wanted to join the Ukrainian army also came under fire.
Seven escape corridors for civilians
The humanitarian situation in several Ukrainian cities continues to deteriorate. More than 6,600 people fled Mariupol and Kyiv on Saturday. Seven humanitarian corridors for fleeing civilians have been set up in the particularly hard-fought areas.
Aid goods should also be brought to the cities via these routes, said the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Wereschtschuk in Kyiv. The corridors were laid out in the areas around the capital Kyiv and around Kharkiv and from the port city of Mariupol, which was particularly hard hit by fighting, in the direction of the city of Zaporizhia. Buses are ready for the people, said Wereshchuk. You can also leave Mariupol by car.
Shaded in white: advance of the Russian army. Shaded in green: Russian-backed separatist areas. Crimea: annexed by Russia.
Image: ISW/03/18/2022
In the Kyiv region, individual villages were to be evacuated and the people taken to the city of Brovary, where buses were waiting to continue their journey. Food and medicine should be brought from Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city, to nearby towns to help the people. The escape routes and routes for the aid deliveries are announced anew for each day.
More than 260 civilians killed in Kharkiv
According to Ukrainian sources, several people were killed when a multi-storey residential building was shelled in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. There were several attacks on Sunday night. Buildings caught fire, the military said. The army spoke of at least two fatalities, the local police of five. According to city officials, 266 civilians have been killed in Kharkiv alone since Russian troops invaded Ukraine more than three weeks ago.
Orphans brought to safety
The authorities evacuated many orphans from the embattled city of Sumy. The governor of the region, Dmytro Shywytskyj, said 71 small children and babies were taken to safety via an escape corridor. Most of them require constant medical attention. Like many other Ukrainian cities, Sumy is besieged by Russian troops and has faced repeated shelling.
According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, since the war began on February 24, Russian forces have carried out 291 rocket attacks and 1,403 airstrikes.