More than 2,500 residents of the Black Sea port city of Mariupol have been killed since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a televised interview.Russia’s military forces have kept up their punishing campaign to capture Ukraine’s capital with fighting and artillery fire in Kyiv’s suburbs, even as Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held a new round of talks on Monday.
The attacks around Kyiv came a day after Russia escalated its offensive by shelling areas close to the Polish border.
He said he was citing figures from the Mariupol city administration, and accused Russian forces of preventing humanitarian aid reaching the encircled city. Russia says it does not target civilians.The office of Ukraine’s general prosecutor says 90 children have been killed and more than 100 others wounded since Russia invaded the country.
“The highest number of victims are in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kherson, Mykolayiv and Zhytomyr regions,” it said in a statement.
Russia denies targeting civilians in what it calls a “special operation” to demilitarise Ukraine.Ukrainian authorities say two people have died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an aircraft factory in Kyiv.
The news portal strana.news published pictures and videos showing a huge cloud of smoke billowing from the Antonov aircraft factory northwest of the city.
The company builds both cargo and passenger aircraft.More than 100 hospitals in Ukraine have been damaged since the invasion began, the health minister has said.
Seven have been destroyed completely and “can’t be restored” and 97 more have been damaged by shelling and bombardment, Viktor Lyashko wrote on Facebook.
Lyashko added the healthcare system was operational and almost 2,000 foreign medical doctors and nurses had volunteered to work in Ukraine.
The UN human rights office (OHCHR) has confirmed the deaths of at least 636 civilians in Ukraine through to March 13, including 46 children.
The actual toll is likely much higher, it said, since there have been delays receiving and corroborating reports from places with intense hostilities such as Kharkiv and Mariupol.
OHCHR has some 50 staff members involved with human rights monitoring in the country.
Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid says Tel Aviv will not be a route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other western countries.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is coordinating the issue together with partners including the Bank of Israel, the Finance Ministry, the Economy Ministry, the Airports Authority, the Energy Ministry, and others,” Lapid said during a visit to Slovakia.
Russian missiles turned the besieged southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol into a hellscape as Moscow's forces continue to bombard buildings and civilians run out of food and water. Video filmed amid a blanket of black smoke rising above the surrounded port city appears to show a missile strike on a set of high-rise buildings, razing at least one of the properties to the ground. A second piece of footage shows a string of high-rise buildings burning next to a row of charred structures that appear to have already been hit by Russian missile strikes in Moscow's relentless bombardment of the city. Another clip shows plumes of black smoke rising above Mariupol while flashes of artillery fire continue to light up the small port city, which has experienced some of the worst suffering of Moscow's 19-day war. The drone also captured a tank being obliterated in a close-quarter skirmish, leaving the vehicle engulfed in a red-hot blaze and a thick cloud of black smoke. It is the latest in Russia's brutal assault on Mariupol which has been left without food, drinking water or medication for up nearly two weeks, MSF staffer Olexander who is inside the city reported. It came as Ukraine's capital of Kyiv 'resembles a disaster movie' today after Russian forces brutally blitzed an apartment block (top right) and debris rained down from an intercepted missile onto the city in Putin's latest barbaric attack (bottom right, residents crying outside the apartment block that was hit). One person was killed and a dozen were injured after the residential building in the north of the capital was hit this morning, narrowly avoiding a passing pedestrian. Later, a missile was intercepted by Ukrainian air defence systems, but debris fell on a bus and a car, killing another person and injuring six.