Russia widens military offensive in Ukraine
Russia is widening its military offensive in Ukraine, striking airports in the west and and an industrial city in the east for the first time. (March 11)
AP
Russia could be preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, an act that would draw a “severe price,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Sunday.
Sullivan told CBS News that Russian rhetoric is increasingly claiming the Ukrainians and Americans will potentially use chemical or biological weapons “and that’s an indicator that, in fact, the Russians are getting ready to do it, and try and pin the blame elsewhere and nobody should fall for that.”
Asked what consequences would result, he said he would not go beyond what President Joe Biden indicated on Friday: “They will pay a severe price.”
“We have communicated that directly to the Russians,” he said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
The warning comes hours after a Russian airstrike on a military training base in western Ukraine killed at least 35 people and wounded 134, a local official said. The assault brought the war to within 25 miles of the border with Poland after a senior Russian diplomat warned that Moscow considered foreign shipments of military equipment to Ukraine “legitimate targets.”
The United States and NATO have regularly sent instructors to the range, also known as the International Peacekeeping and Security Center, to train Ukrainian military personnel. The facility has also hosted international NATO drills. Just weeks before the war began, Florida National Guard members trained there.
The base has become a crucial logistics hub and training center since Russia’s invasion began, The New York Times reported. It was not immediately revealed whether foreign fighters were at the center when the assault took place.
The governor of the Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyi, said Russian forces fired more than 30 cruise missiles at the Yavoriv military range, located about 20 miles northwest of the city of Lviv.
►’MASS CASUALTY SITUATION’: Downtown Kyiv hospital braces for carnage doctors fear will come
►’WORSE THAN HELL’: Mariupol mother fears for her daughter as Russia lays siege to the Ukrainian city
Latest developments:
►American photojournalist Brent Renaud has been killed in Ukraine, the The New York Times said in a statement. The Times said Renaud was a “talented photographer and filmmaker” but was not on assignment for the news outlet and had not worked for the Times since 2015.
►Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to create “pseudo-republics” to break his country apart. He urged Ukraine’s regions not to follow the path of two eastern areas where pro-Russian separatists clashed with Ukrainian forces in 2014.
►An estimated 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed since Russia began its invasion, according to Zelenskyy, and 12,000 Russian forces have died.
►Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Mikhail Podolyak, said Zelenskyy would like to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin “as quickly as possible” but said it would not happen in the immediate future. Zelenskyy has suggested that Israel would ultimately be a good meeting place.
►Kyiv is preparing for a possible blockade by stockpiling humanitarian supplies to support the city’s residents, city officials said Sunday.
►Almost 2.7 million Ukrainians have fled the country, the U.N. refugee agency said.
►Russian fighters fired at the airport in Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in western Ukraine about five miles from Ukraine’s border with Slovakia and Hungary, Mayor Ruslan Martsinkiv said. He said Russia’s goal was “to sow panic and fear.”
U.S. residents who identify with Russian or Ukrainian heritage express strikingly similar views about the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, a pair of exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University polls finds. The two groups are united in their opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war being fiercely fought on his orders.
The invasion is opposed by nearly everyone in both groups: 87% of Russian-Americans and 94% of Ukrainian-Americans. Those of Russian descent have a more positive view of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (72%) than they do of Putin (6%). By nine-to-one, they say Putin should be removed from office.
“Somebody just needs to extract him,” said Dina Sarkisova, 44, who owns a spa in San Diego and participated in the survey. Half-Russian and half-Azeri, she came to the United States as a refugee in 1990, fleeing conflict in Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union collapsed. “There’s no reasoning with him.”
Read more on the polling and the voices of those polled here.
More than 30 cruise missiles blast base near Polish border
In Mariupol, which has endured some of the worst punishment since Russia invaded, efforts to bring food, water and medicine into the port city of 430,000 and to evacuate civilians, were prevented by unceasing attacks. More than 1,500 people have died in Mariupol during the siege, according to the mayor’s office, and the shelling has even interrupted efforts to bury the dead in mass graves. Russian forces shelled a mosque sheltering over 80 children and adults in Mariupol, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said Saturday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to break his country apart, as well as starting “a new stage of terror” with the alleged detention of a mayor from a city west of Mariupol.
“Ukraine will stand this test. We need time and strength to break the war machine that has come to our land,” Zelenskyy said during his nightly address to the nation Saturday.
Russian soldiers pillaged a humanitarian convoy that was trying to reach Mariupol and blocked another, Ukrainian officials say. Ukraine’s military said Russian forces captured Mariupol’s eastern outskirts, tightening their siege of the strategic port. Taking Mariupol and other ports on the Azov Sea could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Since Russian attacks on Ukraine began, 85 children have died, the Ukrainian government said Sunday morning. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova gave the casualty number in a tweet, adding the toll the war has taken on schools.
“Deliberate and brutal shelling of civilians continues. 369 educational institutions were damaged, 57 of which were completely destroyed,” she said.
– Katie Wadington
Italian state radio says a bus carrying about 50 refugees from Ukraine has overturned on a major highway in northern Italy, killing a passenger and injuring several others, none of them seriously. RAI radio said one woman died and the rest of those aboard the bus were safely evacuated after the accident early Sunday near the town of Forli’. It wasn’t immediately clear where the bus was headed.
About 35,000 Ukrainians refugees who fled the war have entered Italy, most of them through its northeastern border with Slovenia. Forli’ is in the region of Emilia-Romagna, which borders the Adriatic Sea and which so far has taken in about 7,000 refugees.
The accident is under investigation.
A Russian general was killed in fighting at Ukraine’s southern city Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said.
Maj. Gen. Andrei Kolesnikov would be the third Russian general to die since the invasion of Ukraine began, making an unusual loss of such a high-ranking military official during fighting. Kolesnikov was the commander of Russia’s Eastern Military District, according to Ukraine’s military.
Russia did not confirm Kolesnikov’s death, and has not shared many details about its military losses during the invasion of Ukraine. Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, the commanding general of the Russian 7th Airborne Division, and Maj. Gen. Vitaly Gerasimov, who had fought with Russian forces in Syria and Chechnya, had previously been reported killed.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence said Saturday that seven people, including one child, were killed Friday by Russian soldiers while traveling along a humanitarian corridor, calling the act a “military crime.”
The ministry claimed Russian soldiers shot at a group of civilians, consisting primarily of women and children, behind “the agreed ‘green’ corridor.” The attack allegedly occurred during an evacuation attempt in the village of Peremoga, which is in the Baryshevskyi district of the Kyiv region. The number of non-fatal injuries from the shooting is unknown, the agency said.
The defense ministry additionally claimed that after the shooting, Russian soldiers would not allow other individuals to escape.
“At present, it is practically impossible to contact them, as well as to provide humanitarian and medical care,” the agency said.
– Ella Lee
Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY; The Associated Press
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