Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Russia’s grim warning to West as airport destroyed
Russian forces have reportedly been ordered to shoot kids and civilians as Vladimir Putin issues a chilling warning to the West.
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Russian forces have reportedly gunned down women and children, killing seven civilians who were allegedly trying to escape a village near Kyiv.
It comes after the defiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed Russia will only take Kyiv if Vladimir Putin’s troops “raze it to the ground” as the Ukrainian capital prepares for a siege.
Ukraine’s intelligence service accused Russia of firing at a convoy of civilian evacuees from the village of Peremoha in the Kyiv region.
They said in a statement: “After the attack, the occupiers forced the remnants of the column to turn back to Peremoha and are not letting them out of the village.
“Russians shot a column of women and children while trying to evacuate from the village of Peremoha in the Kyiv region along an agreed “green” corridor. Seven people died, including one child.”
Mr Putin has shown “no interest” in ending the slaughter in Ukraine as he orders his troops to intensify their drive to topple the capital Kyiv.In what has been described by aid agencies as “medieval”, the capital came under a volley of devastating missiles as had other key cities including port city Mariupol that has been blockaded for 12 days and was starving out civilians.
The barrage across the country was less shock and awe and more shock and horror as countless residential areas were struck in various town and cities; Russian forces have taken east of Mariupol where bodies remain strewn about streets, and a military airfield south of the city in Vasylkiv has been hit by missiles.
The great fear Russian forces would do what they did in Syria and Chechnya and level whole cities is now happening, air raid sirens ringing out across most of Ukraine.
In a move that could engulf Europe in the conflict, Russia also overnight warned Western supplies being delivered to Ukraine by land and air could now be considered a “legitimate target” in the war.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg had earlier said such an attack on the supply lines of allied nations would be “a dangerous escalation of the war.”
French president Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz held a three-way 75-minute telephone hook up with President Putin about the plight of civilians to which the Russian retorted it was Ukrainian forces performing human fights abuses.
The men agreed not to speak expansively about discussions but the French delegation concluded it was “frank and difficult” and did not progress anything.
“We did not detect a willingness on Putin’s part to end the war,” an official said.
President Putin has consistently said he would only authorise a ceasefire when Ukraine surrendered.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday held a briefing with foreign media and conceded 1300 of his troops had been killed since the Russian invasion but Russian losses in 17 days of war were the greatest in decades and had forced Moscow to now send in reinforcements.
The Russian bombardment has trapped thousands of people in besieged cities and sent 2.5 million Ukrainians fleeing to neighbouring countries. Mr Zelensky said the conflict meant some small Ukrainian towns no longer existed but Russia would never truly occupy the capital or country and Ukrainians would fight to their deaths.
“If they carry out carpet bombings and wipe off the historic memory of the entire region, the history of Kyivan Rus, the history of Europe, they could enter Kyiv but they will have to leave on that land alone, certainly without us.
“Even if they bring a million Russians here, they can’t occupy Ukraine.”
On Saturday, a military air base in the town of Vasylkiv south of the capital was destroyed by eight missiles as was a fuel and an ammunition depot and the villages of Kryachky and Kvitneve.
FEARS MAYOR ‘KIDNAPPED’ BY RUSSIAN TROOPS
The mayor of Ukraine’s city of Melitopol has reportedly been kidnapped after he “refused to hand them the city”.
CCTV footage released by the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine reportedly showed mayor Ivan Fedorov being abducted from the city’s crisis centre by a group of around 10 Russian troops – who put a plastic bag over his head – after he “refused to co-operate with the enemy,” Ukraine’s parliament said.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called the kidnapping a war crime.
“We urge the international community to immediately react to the abduction of Ivan Fedorov and other civilians in Ukraine, to strengthen pressure on Russia to force it to end the barbaric war against the Ukrainian people,” the ministry said in a statement on Facebook.
Melitopol: The occupiers kidnapped the mayor of Melitopol, who refused to hand them the city #StopPutinNOW#StopRussia#WARINUKRAINE#Ukraine#mariodraghipic.twitter.com/oSXCvW1vNq
— SSSCIP Ukraine (@dsszzi) March 11, 2022
Air attack sirens were ringing out in towns and cities across Ukraine with Russia’s intense push now into its second day.
The pounding started shortly after 5am local time (2pm Saturday AEDT), most concentrated around Kyiv with a non-stop volley but also other points across both east and west.
Pre-dawn assaults began at 4am in Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel in the outskirts of the capital.
A seaborne assault was expected to take place off Odessa on the Black Sea but poor weather hampered Russia’s marine deployment.
Russian forces have dramatically escalated their assault on Ukraine with multiple rockets and missiles striking cities, notably in the west of the country in an attempt to cut supply lines to Ukraine forces.
The widening of the assault on Ukraine suggests an expanding strategy by Russian armed forces and a shrinking opportunity for civilians to leave the country for safety.
And in a dramatic twist, Russia has revealed 16,000 volunteer fighters largely from Syria would fight them in combat in Ukraine’s east linking with Chechnen fighters, Wagner Group mercenaries and President Vladimir Putin’s private Rosgvardia army.
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That revelation came as Russian fighters reportedly fired at a border hamlet in Belarus as a false flag attack on its ally to give Belarus an excuse to now invade Ukraine from the north.
Ukraine’s north west city of Lutsk was hit with four Russian missiles in an air strike taking out its airfield that has been used to move armaments to Ukraine forces, killing at least four and wounding six. Lutsk is 70km from the critical Rivne nuclear power plant in the country’s west.
The western city of Ivano-Frankivsk was also hit with precision long-range missiles taking out its military airport and runway. NATO and European Union nations used the airfields in western Ukraine for the rest of the country.
Air raid sirens in both cities failed to go off to warn civilians of an inbound strike although the early warning air raid sirens in nearby Lviv did send the population underground three times from 2am.
The industrial city Dnipro in central Ukraine was also struck for the first time, three missiles taking out a shoe warehouses, apartment block and a kindergarten.
The expansion of hostilities yesterday also included bombardment of other towns and cities including Kerdylivshchyna south of Sumy in the northeast and Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the north.
Since its February 24 invasion, Russia has launched 328 cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities, towns and villages.
In what appears to be a pivot in tactics, Russia’s much hyped 60km long column of tanks and artillery has now dispersed to encircle the capital Kyiv, with Howitzer cannons moved into firing positions.
Maxar Technologies satellite images showed the column split with elements progressing 5km closer to the centre from different directions and now repositioned in a forest, between residential blocks and a main road with some elements just 14km from the centre.
President Putin meanwhile had approved bringing in “volunteer” fighters largely from Syria into the war east of the country in the Donbas. He revealed more than 16,000 applications were being processed from those wanting to fight for Russia which has already been hosting mercenary groups. He said they would be armed with Javelin and Stinger ground missiles captured from Ukraine forces and originally provided by NATO.
Meanwhile, in an extraordinary exchange a Russian soldier stopped a Ukrainian priest collecting the body of his friend the local mayor, that Russians had earlier booby-trapped.
Hostomel mayor Yuri Prilipko was killed in the occupied town, north east of Kyiv, when he was driving with food and medicines and he and passengers got out to get around a blocked road and were shot by a sniper. Sometime after the local priest came to retrieve the body with a wheelbarrow but a Russian soldier rushed out and stopped him pointing out the body was booby trapped.
“When the Father approached the body, he was stopped by the Russian occupier and told not to approach. The Russian removed wiring or something and only then helped to load the body on the wheelbarrow,” Rostyslav Skurativskyi, an adviser to the mayor told Ukrainian media.
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Originally published as Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Russia’s grim warning to West as airport destroyed
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