Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned a Russian attack on a children’s hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol as evidence of “genocide” as the US moved to drastically bolster support to the war-ravaged country with a $13.6bn aid package.
The Ukrainian president shared video footage showing massive destruction at the hospital – a combined 600-bed complex with children’s and maternity wards – in the southern port city that has been under relentless bombardment for nine days.
“A children’s hospital, a maternity ward. How did they threaten the Russian Federation? What is this country, the Russian Federation, that is afraid of hospitals, maternity wards and is destroying them?” said Zelenskiy on Telegram.
“Hospitals and schools are destroyed. Churches and ordinary buildings are destroyed. People are killed. Children are killed. The aerial bombing of a children’s hospital is the ultimate evidence that genocide of Ukrainians is happening.”
The White House condemned the attack as “barbaric” while US House lawmakers voted to rush through a $13.6bn aid package that would increase military and humanitarian support to Ukraine and its European allies. The aid includes $6.5bn for the US costs of sending troops and weapons to eastern Europe and equipping allied forces there, and $6.8bn to care for refugees and provide economic support to allies. Senate approval is expected within days. The House also passed a bill banning Russia oil imports.
US House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she talked to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy for 45 minutes on Wednesday. She said they discussed the weapons and other assistance his country needs and “the crimes against humanity that [Vladimir] Putin is committing”, including the maternity hospital air strike. “This is the beast that Putin is,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi indicated the $13.6bn US aid package was likely to be just the tip of a much broader aid effort. “All of us will have to do more” to help Ukraine in coming weeks or months and over the long term to help it rebuild, Pelosi said, referring to the US and Nato allies.
The US meanwhile warned Russia could be preparing to use chemical or biological weapons in the war. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday that Russia had been making “false claims about alleged US biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine”, and added that the allegations had been echoed in Beijing.
“Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,” she tweeted.
The concerns came as UK intelligence highlighted the strength of the Ukrainian resistance. In an update on Thursday, Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the large Russian column north-west of Kyiv had made “little progress in over a week” and suffers continued losses at the hands of Ukraine forces. The MoD said there had been a noticeable drop in Russian air activity in recent days, likely due to the “unexpected effectiveness” of the Ukraine forces. It also said Russia has deployed conscript troops despite assurances from Putin not to do so.
As the Russian president seeks to regain momentum, local authorities described the damage to the Mariupol hospital as “colossal” and said women in labour were among the wounded.
A local official said the attack injured at least 17 staff, though no deaths were immediately reported. Zelenskiy said the “direct strike by Russian troops” had left children under the wreckage.
The deputy mayor, Sergei Orlov, said Mariupol was being shelled continuously and 1,170 residents had died, 47 of whom were buried in a mass grave on Wednesday. “It’s medieval,” he said. “It’s pure genocide. The attack isn’t simply treacherous. It’s a war crime. They are attacking us with aviation, shells, multiple rocket launchers.”
The Guardian was unable to fully verify the Ukrainian officials’ accounts, but video published by the Associated Press showed multiple injured people at the site of the hospital attack.
The Red Cross has described conditions in the port city as “apocalyptic”, while deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the situation was “catastrophic”. Zelenskiy compared the devastation and suffering there to that caused by the Nazis.
Journalists have described corpses lying unburied in the streets and hungry residents breaking into stores in search of food, and melting snow for water while thousands sheltered in basements.
The Russian army had also “shot and bombed” a humanitarian corridor agreed with Moscow and intended to allow civilians a safe route out, the deputy mayor of the city said, mined the road, and installed a checkpoint. Of an estimated 200,000 people desperate to leave, only 2,000 to 3,000 a day were able to.
On Wednesday, Zelenskiy said at least 35,000 civilians were able to leave the cities of Sumy, Enerhodar and areas around Kyiv. He said he hoped the evacuations would continue on Thursday with three more routes set to open out of Mariupol, Volnovakha in the south-east and Izyum in eastern Ukraine.
Zelenskiy said on Wednesday the threat level against the country was “at the maximum” and again called on the west to impose a no-fly zone, saying it risked a “humanitarian catastrophe” if it did not.
Speaking in Washington, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, reiterated the Nato position that a no-fly zone would bring Nato into direct conflict with Russia.
The conflict has also raised fears of a nuclear accident in a country with major nuclear plants and the site of the Chernobyl disaster. The UN’s atomic watchdog said Wednesday it saw “no critical impact on safety” at Chernobyl, location of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986, despite a loss of power there.
But it warned it was not receiving updates from either Chernobyl or Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear plant, which is also now under Russian control.
The UK said the Russians had confirmed the use of a thermobaric rocket system. The weapons, also known as vacuum bombs, suck in oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion.
Three rounds of peace talks between the two sides have so far yielded no progress, with Moscow continuing to insist Ukraine must “demilitarise” and enshrine neutrality in its constitution before it halts what it calls a “special military operation” aimed at ensuring Russia’s security. Moscow insisted on Wednesday it would prefer to reach its goals through negotiation.
In other developments:
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has landed in Turkey for the face-to-face talks on Thursday with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba, the highest-level meeting between the two countries since Russia invaded. Kuleba warned in a Facebook video his expectations were “limited”. So far, the parties have been engaged in lower-level talks in Belarus, largely over humanitarian issues and involving only Ukrainian officials.
Leaders of the 27-nation EU are to meet in Versailles on Thursday and Friday. A draft declaration prepared for the summit said: “Russia’s war of aggression constitutes a tectonic shift in European history.” The leaders are expected to discuss reducing the bloc’s energy dependency on Russia, and Ukraine’s request to join the EU
The US is weighing sanctions on nuclear power supplier Rosatom, a senior Biden administration official said on Wednesday.
Nestle, cigarette maker Philip Morris and Sony on Wednesday joined the list of multinationals stepping back from the country.
Agencies contributed to this report