Russia Ukraine War News updates: At least 21 dead after Russian shelling of east Ukraine town, say local officials - The Economic Times

Russia Ukraine News Live:At least 21 people were killed and 25 were injured on Thursday when Russian forces shelled a town in eastern Ukraine, local prosecutors said. Artillery fire early Thursday hit a school and a cultural centre in the town of Merefa outside the city of Kharkiv, regional prosecutors said in a Facebook post. Of the wounded, 10 people are in serious condition, they said. A photo accompanying the prosecutors' statement showed a building of several storeys that was destroyed in the middle with windows blown out and emergency workers combing through the wreckage.Other Updates:Russian forces in Ukraine are blasting cities and killing civilians but no longer making progress on the ground, Western countries said on Thursday, as a war Moscow was thought to have hoped to win within days entered its fourth week.Ukraine said Russian forces had destroyed a theatre where women and children had been sheltering in the besieged southern port of Mariupol. An official in the Mariupol mayor's office said a bomb shelter at the theatre had "withstood" and there were survivors, but details of casualties were still not known.Russia denied striking the theatre, which commercial satellite pictures showed had the word "children" marked out on the ground in front before it was blown up.Viacheslav Chaus, governor of Chernihiv, a northern city that has been intensely bombarded, said 53 civilians had been killed there in the past 24 hours. The toll could not be independently verified.Although both sides have pointed to limited progress in peace talks this week, President Vladimir Putin, who ordered Russia's invasion on Feb. 24, showed little sign of relenting.In a vituperative televised speech, he inveighed against "traitors and scum" at home who helped the West, and said the Russian people would spit them out like gnats.Heavily outnumbered Ukrainian forces have prevented Moscow from capturing any of Ukraine's biggest cities so far despite the largest assault on a European state since World War Two. More than 3 million Ukrainians have fled and thousands of civilians and combatants have died.


via Economictimes

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