Russia Ukraine News LIVE Updates: Six countries including US, UK request UNSC meeting on Ukraine situation - The Economic Times

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy invoked 9/11 during an urgent appeal Wednesday to the U.S. Congress for more weapons to stem the Russian assault. U.S. President Joe Biden announced an additional $800 million for Ukraine's military and said Russian President Vladimir Putin is a "war criminal."In the encircled city of Mariupol, a Russian airstrike destroyed a theater where hundreds of people were sheltering. Many people were buried in the rubble, Ukraine's foreign ministry said in a statement, though the number of casualties wasn't clear.Missiles and artillery slammed into high-rise apartment towers in Kyiv, setting buildings ablaze and sending smoke over the capital and its suburbs.Ten people were killed while standing in line for bread in the northern city of Chernihiv, the Ukrainian General Prosecutor's Office said.Satellite images from the Maxar space technology company showed Russian self-propelled artillery and multiple-rocket launchers deployed on the outskirts of Chernihiv, their barrels and tubes aimed at the city.Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter that the attack on the theater in Mariupol is a "horrendous war crime." Maxar's satellite imagery from Monday showed the word "children" written in large white letters in Russian in front of and behind the building.The Russian defense ministry denied bombing the theater or anywhere else in Mariupol on Wednesday.In central Kyiv, shrapnel from an artillery shell smashed into a 12-story apartment building early Wednesday, wiping out the building's top floor and starting a fire. Emergency services reported two victims from the blaze, without specifying if they were killed or injured.Fighting continued in Kyiv's suburbs, depriving thousands of heat and clean water.A Russian airstrike destroyed multiple residential apartments in the town of Markhalivka southwest of the capital, authorities said.Russia now occupies the city of Ivankiv, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Kyiv, and controls the surrounding region on the border with Belarus, local officials said.Relentless strikes pounded the northeastern city of Kharkiv close to the Russian border, but Ukrainian forces continued to thwart Russia's incursion into the heart of the city, city officials said.Powerful explosions also thundered in the region around Kherson, a strategic port near the Black Sea. Ukrainian military forces have dealt a punishing blow to Russian air assets stationed at the airport in Kherson, which Russian troops seized early in the war, the Ukraine military's General Staff said late Wednesday.Satellite photos by Planet Labs PBC analyzed by The Associated Press show helicopters and vehicles on fire at the air base after what Ukraine said was its strike on Tuesday.There were also explosions near a train station in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, home to several power stations.The region "is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe," Zelenskyy's office warned.

via Economictimes