Ukraine says 300 died in theatre attack, hunger grips cities

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) :

About 300 people were killed in the Russian air strike last week on a Mariupol theatre that was being used as a shelter, Ukrainian authorities said Friday in what would make it the war’s deadliest known attack on civilians yet.

Meanwhile, it what could signal an important narrowing of Moscow’s military objectives, the U.S. said Russian forces appear to have halted, at least for now, their ground offensive aimed at capturing the capital, Kyiv, and are concentrating more on the fighting for control of the Donbas region in the country’s southeast – a shift the Kremlin seemed to confirm.

LIBERATION OF DONBAS

Col. Gen Sergei Rudskoi, deputy chief of the Russian general staff, said that the main objective of the first stage of the operation – reducing Ukraine’s fighting capacity – has “generally been accomplished,” allowing Russian forces to focus on “the main goal, liberation of Donbas”.

The Donbas is the largely Russian-speaking eastern part of the country where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 and where many residents have expressed support for Moscow.

In Mariupol, meanwhile, the bloodshed at the theatre fuelled allegations Moscow is committing war crimes by killing civilians, whether deliberately or by indiscriminate fire.

For days, the government in the besieged and ruined port city was unable to give a casualty count for the March 16 bombardment of the grand, columned Mariupol Drama Theater, where hundreds of people were said to be taking cover, the word “CHILDREN” printed in Russian in huge white letters on the ground outside to ward off aerial attack.

In announcing the death toll on its Telegram channel Friday, the city government cited eyewitnesses. But it was not immediately clear how witnesses arrived at the figure or whether emergency workers had finished excavating the ruins.

DEVASTATION

U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Friday the theatre bombing was an “absolute shock, particularly given the fact that it was so clearly a civilian target”. He said it showed “a brazen disregard for the lives of innocent people”.

The scale of devastation in Mariupol, where bodies have been left unburied amid bomb craters and hollowed-out buildings, has made information difficult to obtain.