A children’s hospital and maternity ward in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol has been destroyed by a Russian airstrike this afternoon, Ukrainian officials say. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said children are buried under rubble and the regional governor said 17 people have been wounded. The Guardian could not independently verify this, but video published by the Associated Press showed multiple injured people at the site of the hospital attack. Ukraine has accused Russian forces of “holding 400,000 people hostage” in Mariupol. The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said the city, where conditions are described as “apocalyptic”, was still being shelled by Russian troops, despite an agreement to establish a safe evacuation corridor for civilians.
Ukrainian authorities have said the power supply has been cut to the defunct Chernobyl power plant. The national power company Ukrenergo said it was impossible to restore the power lines because of fighting in the surrounding areas. The UN’s atomic watchdog said the spent nuclear fuel stored there had cooled down sufficiently for it not to be an imminent safety concern.
Ukrainian authorities said earlier that humanitarian corridors should allow residents of the heavily bombarded cities of Mariupol, Enerhodar, Sumy, Izyum and Volnovakha, as well as towns around Kyiv including Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel, to leave, calling on Russian forces to respect an “official public commitment” to cease fire. But the Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko says Moscow has “largely failed” to adhere to these agreements. Civilians have been unable to leave Izyum because of continued Russian shelling in the eastern Kharkiv region, said the regional governor, Oleh Synyehubov, adding that buses intended to evacuate them were still waiting at the entrance to the town.
Zelenskiy said the international community would be responsible for a mass “humanitarian catastrophe” if it did not agree a no-fly zone and warned that the country was at maximum threat level. In his daily televised address, he said Ukrainians had shown throughout the last two weeks that they would never give in.
More than 3 million Ukrainians will need food assistance, the head of the World Food Programme said. David Beasley, executive director of the UN agency, met Poland’s foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, to discuss helping refugees arriving in Poland.
