1,300 feared trapped under theater as Russian missiles destroy Ukrainian cities
Russian missiles continued to devastate major cities across Ukraine on Friday — as rescuers desperately tried to reach as many as 1,300 people feared trapped for two days below the rubble of a blown-up theater.
The early-morning barrages included strikes on capital Kyiv, where at least one person was killed when six houses and two schools were hit in the Podil neighborhood, leaving nearly 100 people evacuated.
At least four children were among 19 injured, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said from the scene — where distressing images showed a dazed-looking elderly woman walking with blood dripping down her wounded head.
Missiles also bombarded the western city of Lviv, which is close to the Polish border and has become a crossroads both for fleeing refugees as well as those bringing aid.
In other developments:
• The Defense Department’s intelligence arm has warned Russian President Vladimir Putin will increasingly threaten to use nuclear bombs if his invasion of Ukraine drags on and exposes Moscow’s military weaknesses.
Get the latest updates in the Russia-Ukraine conflict with The Post’s live coverage.
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Russian State TV that the Kremlin would view any weapons deliveries to Ukraine as “fair game” for Russian strikes
• Ukrainian refugees seeking asylum in the US will not be turned away, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas declared this week after reports emerged that border officials were using the Title 42 public health authority to refuse entry to Eastern European refugees along the southern border.
• The UN estimates 3.2 million Ukrainian civilians have fled the country during the fighting. In addition, 6.5 million have been displaced internally, as Russian forces continue to shell residential city centers. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s border protection agency said roughly 320,000 Ukrainian citizens had returned to the country from abroad since the invasion began, according to the Kyiv Post.
• Ukrainian forces claimed to have killed feared Russian colonel Sergei Sukharev, a veteran of Russia’s campaigns in Chechnya and Georgia. The announcement came two days after Ukraine claimed to have killed a fourth Russian Major General in battle.
As the latest airstrikes rained down, rescuers kept trying to find survivors of one of the worst attacks from 23 days of war, when a theater used as a shelter in besieged Mariupol was hit.
While some survivors had emerged, local officials feared more than 1,000 people remain in a basement bomb shelter below the rubble of the three-story building that was clearly marked “CHILDREN” in Russian.
“As of now, we know that 130 people have been evacuated, but according to our data, there are still more than 1,300 people in these basements, in this bomb shelter,” the country’s human rights commissioner, Ludmyla Denisova, told Ukrainian television.
“We pray that they will all be alive, but so far there is no information about them.”
Ukrainian parliament member Sergiy Taruta gave the same figures, calling the situation in Mariupol “a tragedy of a WORLDWIDE scale!”
“How many people continue to be under the ruins, how many injured and killed there, no one knows,” he said, saying the theater was a sanctuary after 80 percent of the city’s homes were damaged by Russian shelling.
“A lot of doctors have been killed. This means that all the survivors of the bombing will either die under the ruins of the theater, or have already died,” he wrote.
In an update late Friday, Mariupol’s city council said it knew of one serious injury — but had still been unable to reach the masses assumed still locked in the basement to get a death toll.
“Due to constant air strikes and fighting within the city, it was almost impossible to dismantle the debris immediately after the shelling,” the council wrote on Telegram.
Captain Svyatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov regiment, told the Kyiv Post that rescue attempts were also being thwarted by ongoing “street fights in the city” by Russian troops.
“Enemy aircraft and artillery are working non-stop. The city is being leveled to the ground. … People are being taken hostage,” he said.
The World Health Organization said it had verified 43 attacks on hospitals and health facilities, with 12 people killed and 34 injured.
At the same time, Ukraine’s “food supply chain is falling apart,” warned Jakob Kern, emergency coordinator for the crisis at the United Nations’ World Food Programme. “Movements of goods have slowed down due to insecurity and the reluctance of drivers.”
Western intelligence experts have said Russia has increasingly relied on airstrikes due to its military’s apparent failure to successfully attack on the ground.
As of Friday, more than 14,200 Russian troops had been killed and more than 3,000 military vehicles destroyed, including more than 200 helicopters and planes, 450 tanks and nearly 1,500 armored vehicles, Ukraine’s military claimed. Those numbers could not be independently confirmed.
With Post wires
