LVIV,
American defense officials offered an assessment of the Russian air campaign, estimating that invading pilots are averaging 200 sorties a day, compared with five to 10 for Ukrainian forces, which are focusing more on surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and drones to take out Russian aircraft.
New commercial satellite images appeared to capture artillery firing on residential areas between Russian forces and the capital. The images from
In a devastated village east of the capital, villagers climbed over toppled walls and flapping metal strips in the remnants of a pool hall, restaurant and theater freshly blown apart by Russian bombs.
Russian President
“We are not going away from here,” Merzyk said.
On the economic and political front, the
The move to revoke
“The free world is coming together to confront Putin,” Biden said.
On the ground,
“It’s ugly already, but it’s going to get worse,” said
With the invasion in its 16th day, Putin said there had been “certain positive developments” in
Ukrainian President
“It’s impossible to say how many days we will still need to free our land, but it is possible to say that we will do it," he said via video from
Zelenskyy said authorities were working on establishing 12 humanitarian corridors and trying to ensure food, medicine and other basics get to people across the country. Thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been killed in the invasion, along with Ukrainian civilians.
He accused
So far, the Russians have made the biggest advances on cities in the east and south while struggling in the north and around
Russian airstrikes also targeted for the first time Dnipro, a major industrial hub in the east and Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, with about 1 million people. One person was killed, Ukrainian officials said.
In images of the aftermath released by Ukraine’s emergency agency, firefighters doused a flaming building, and ash fell on bloodied rubble. Smoke billowed over shattered concrete where buildings once stood.
The bombardment continued in Mariupol, where a deadly strike on a maternity hospital this week sparked international outrage and war-crime allegations.
Unrelenting attacks have thwarted repeated attempts to send in food and medicine and evacuate civilians from Mariupol, a city of 430,000. In a statement, the Mariupol mayor's office said Friday that the toll of people killed during the now 12-day siege had risen to 1,582.
In the face of the unrelenting bombing, “the dead aren't even being buried," the mayor's office said.
Elsewhere, temperatures were forecast to hit -13 degrees Celsius (8 Fahrenheit) in the eastern city of Kharkiv, which has come under heavy bombardment.
About 400 apartment buildings in Kharkiv lost heat, and Mayor
The latest assaults came a day after satellite photos appeared to show that the huge armored column that was stalled for over a week outside
Military analysts were divided over whether the maneuvering by the Russian convoy signaled the imminent start of a siege of
Americans point instead to other forces that are moving toward
Hundreds of miles to the south of
The
The U.N. political chief said Friday that the international organization had received credible reports that Russian forces were using cluster bombs in populated areas. The bombs scatter smaller explosives over a wide area and are prohibited in cities and towns under international law.
Russians and Ukrainians have held multiple rounds of talks near the
Some 2.5 million people have fled
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