Russia-Ukraine War Live Updates:
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine entered the 16th day on Friday after Russian forces struck at different locations in Zhytomyr and Mariupol. Moscow on Thursday promised to open humanitarian corridors every day to allow Ukrainians to flee onto its soil, but Kyiv has previously rejected evacuation routes leading into Russia.
While Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said around 100,000 people had evacuated the country’s cities in two days, but accused Russian forces of targeting a humanitarian corridor in the city of Mariupol. Zelensky said he decided to send a convoy of trucks into the besieged port city with food, water and medicine. But “the occupiers launched a tank attack exactly where this corridor was supposed to be”, he said in a video statement, describing it as “outright terror”.
Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov on Friday called Russia’s invasion as a “terrorist war” and claimed that Russian forces have killed more civilians than soldiers in the eastern European country. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stressed that more than one lakh people have been evacuated from the war-torn cities in just 48 hours.
Meanwhile, a special flight from Bucharest carrying 119 Indians and 27 foreign nationals landed in Delhi on Thursday morning. The Biden administration publicly warned that Russia might seek to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine as the White House rejected Russian claims of illegal chemical weapons development in the country it has invaded.
First Published: IST