The besieged city of Mariupol – where suffering and survival has caught global attention amid the war – is being “wiped off from the face of the Earth”, a police officer said in a desperate appeal on the 25th day of the Ukraine war. “Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the earth,” Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said in a video address to Western leaders, news agency The Associated Press reported. Moscow refuses to relent despite appeals and global punitive measures. On Saturday, it said it struck a Ukraine target for the first time with a hypersonic missile.
Here are ten updates on the Ukraine war:
1. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian president, warned in his latest speech that the cities in his country “are being destroyed on the orders of people who live in European, in beautiful Swiss towns, who enjoy property in your cities. It would really be good to strip them of this privilege.” “I want everyone to hear me now, especially in Moscow. The time has come for a meeting, it is time to talk. The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be such that it will take you several generations to recover,” he was quoted as saying in reports.
2. Zelenskyy has accused the Kremlin of deliberately creating “a humanitarian catastrophe”. He has been urging Russia’s Vladimir Putin for talks. Five rounds of ceasefire discussions in the last few weeks have yielded no results.
3. The Russian forces have been accused of blocking humanitarian aid in the port city of Mariupol where fighting on the streets has been raging. More than 6,000 people were evacuated on Saturday, Ukriane’s deputy prime minister Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, according to reports.
4. “The occupiers are forcing people to leave Ukraine for Russian territory. The occupiers illegally took people out of the Levoberezhny district and a shelter in the building of a sports club, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from constant bombing,” an official statement said.
5. In another escalation amid the war, Russia has now resorted to the use of hypersonic missiles. It used advanced “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles for the first time to strike a western Ukraine target. But Kyiv did not confirm the attack.
6. Kyiv is expecting to recieve a new shipment of US weapons within days, including Javelin and Stinger missiles. “The (weapons) will be on the territory of our country in the nearest future. We are talking about days,” National Security and Defence Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said, Reuters reported.
7. NATO member states have been providing millitary support to Ukraine which has been criticised by Russia.
8. US president Joe Biden on Friday – in a phone call with Xi Jinping – warned China over its support to Russia. Washington earlier expressed concern amid reports that China may be providing Russia with weapons.
9. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has, however, said Beijing-Moscow ties are set to grow stronger. “At a time when the west is blatantly undermining all the foundations on which the international system is based, we — as two great powers — need to think how to carry on in this world,” he was quoted as saying in a CNN report.
10. The war has entered Day 25, forcing millions out of homes. The catastrophe is the worst in Europe since World War 2.
(With inputs from AP, Reuters, AFP)
