Russian negotiator says Moscow, Kyiv making little progress on key issues
spokesman Report
KYIV/WASHINGTON/MOSCOW: About 300 people were killed in the Russian airstrike last week that blasted open a Mariupol theater, Ukrainian authorities said Friday in what would make it the war’s deadliest known attack on civilians yet.
In a vain attempt to protect the hundreds of people taking cover inside the theater, “CHILDREN” in Russian had been printed in huge white letters on the ground in two places outside the grand, columned building to make it visible from the air. For days, the government in the besieged and ruined city of Mariupol was unable to give a casualty count for the March 16 attack.
In announcing the death toll on its Telegram channel Friday, it cited eyewitnesses. But it was not immediately clear whether emergency workers had finished excavating the ruins of the Mariupol Drama Theater or how witnesses arrived at the figure.
Still, the emerging picture is certain to fuel allegations Moscow has committed war crimes by killing civilians, whether deliberately or by indiscriminate fire. And it could increase pressure on NATO to step up military aid. The alliance has refused so far to supply warplanes or establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine for fear of getting into a war with Russia.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Friday the reaction to the theater bombing was “just absolute shock, particularly given the fact that it was so clearly a civilian target.” He said it showed “a brazen disregard for the lives of innocent people.”
The scale of devastation in Mariupol, where bodies have been left unburied amid bomb craters and hollowed-out buildings, has made information difficult to obtain. But soon after the attack, the Ukrainian Parliament’s human rights commissioner said more than 1,300 people had taken shelter in the theater, many of them because their homes had been destroyed. The building had a basement bomb shelter, and some survivors did emerge from the rubble after the attack.
The reported death toll came a day after Biden and allied leaders promised that more military aid for Ukraine is on the way. But they stopped short of providing some of the heavy weaponry that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said is urgently needed. Zelenskky has pleaded for planes, tanks and no-fly patrols over Ukraine.
On the other hand, Russia said it would offer safe passage starting Friday to 67 ships from 15 foreign countries that are stranded in Ukrainian ports because of the danger of shelling and mines. The International Atomic Energy Agency said it has been told by Ukrainian authorities that Russian shelling is preventing worker rotations in and out of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant.
Russia’s military claimed it destroyed a massive Ukrainian fuel base used to supply the Kyiv region’s defenses, with ships firing a salvo of cruise missiles, according to the Interfax news agency. Videos on social media showed an enormous fireball near the capital.
Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine are coming closer to an understanding on secondary issues at peace talks but there has been limited progress on the key questions, Moscow negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said on Friday, the Interfax news agency reported. “Negotiations have been going on all week, from Monday to Friday, in video conference format, and will continue tomorrow,” Interfax quoted Medinsky as saying. “On secondary issues, positions are converging. However on the main political issues, we are in fact treading water.”