Russian forces attacked Melitopol and captured the city’s mayor. (File image)
Russian forces have moved closer to the capital Kyiv and attacked civilian areas in other Ukrainian cities, prompting many warnings of potential war crimes. An adviser to the President of Ukraine called Kyiv a “city under siege”.
Here are the top 10 updates on this big story:
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Local media reported that air raid sirens sounded throughout most of Ukraine’s cities early Saturday morning, urging residents to seek shelter. Some Ukrainian local media reported on sirens in the capital Kyiv, the western city of Lviv in Odessa, and Kharkiv, Cherkasy, as well as in the Sumy region in the northeast of the country.
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Russian forces have advanced in Melitopol, southern Ukraine, and have captured the city’s mayor. “A group of 10 occupiers kidnapped the mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov,” Ukraine’s parliament said on Twitter. “He refused to cooperate with the enemy,” it added.
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The situation was dire in the southern port city of Mariupol, which was besieged and under constant Russian shelling. Mariupol has been without water and electricity for 11 days. The city’s mayor said it was under shelling “every 30 minutes”, with 1,200 civilians dead and reports of starving and dead bodies in the streets.
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Three rockets hit civilian buildings in downtown Dnipro on Friday, destroying a shoe factory and killing a security guard. Dnipro has been seen as a safe haven, less vulnerable to attacks since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February. A house for the disabled near Kharkiv was also bombed, with 330 people there at the time. that point, officials said.
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Russia on Friday announced that the military airports of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk, in western Ukraine, near the Polish border, were “shut down”.
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With Russia’s offensive in its third week, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who rallied his people with a series of speeches from Kyiv, said Ukraine had “reached a strategic turning point”. “It is impossible to say how many days (ahead) we have to liberate the land of Ukraine. But it can be said that we will,” he said. “We’re moving towards our goal, our victory.”
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Russia, which accuses Ukraine of developing biological weapons with the help of the United States, says the Kyiv regime is currently “destroying evidence of military biological programs” it is carrying out. Both Washington and Kyiv deny the existence of laboratories aimed at producing biological weapons in the country.
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To avoid a direct military intervention in non-NATO Ukraine that they fear could trigger a Third World War, the United States and its allies on Friday announced they would end normal trade relations with the United States. Russia and announced a ban on imports of vodka, diamonds and seafood. The United States will also ban the export of American luxury goods to Russia and Belarus.
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The Kremlin has invited “volunteers” from Syria to fight alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, drawing the Middle East into a conflict the West has struggled to contain.
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The United Nations says more than two and a half million people have fled “pointless war” in Ukraine – more than half to Poland. The UN has confirmed the deaths of 564 civilians in Ukraine since February 24, including 41 children.
