Ukraine says aircraft bombed cities overnight

PTI, Mar 8, 2022, 10:36 AM IST

Russian aircraft bombed cities in eastern and central Ukraine overnight, Ukrainian officials said. Shelling pounded suburbs of the capital, Kyiv.

In Sumy and Okhtyrka, to the east of Kyiv near the Russian border, bombs fell on residential buildings and destroyed a power plant, regional leader Dmytro Zhivitsky said. He said there were dead and wounded but gave no figures.

Bombs also hit oil depots in Zhytomyr and the neighboring town of Cherniakhiv, located west of Kyiv.

In Bucha, a Kyiv suburb, the mayor reported heavy artillery fire.

“We can’t even gather up the bodies because the shelling from heavy weapons doesn’t stop day or night,” Mayor Anatol Fedoruk said. “Dogs are pulling apart the bodies on the city streets. It’s a nightmare.” The Ukrainian government is demanding the opening of humanitarian corridors to allow people to safely leave Sumy, Zhytomyr, Kharkiv, Mariupol, and suburbs of Kyiv, including Bucha.

__ Lviv: The mayor of Lviv said the city in far western Ukraine is struggling to feed and house the tens of thousands of people who have fled here from war-torn regions of the country. “We really need support,” Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said.

More than 200,000 Ukrainians displaced from their homes are now in Lviv, filling up sports halls, schools, hospitals, and church buildings. The historical city once popular with tourists had a population of 700,000 before the war.

The mayor said the city needs big tents equipped with kitchens so food can be prepared.

Hundreds of thousands more people could arrive if humanitarian corridors are opened up from cities now under siege by Russian troops. The embassies of the US and EU countries also moved to Lviv from Kyiv before the invasion.

Lviv is the main transit point for those fleeing just across the border to Poland. Many of the 1.7 million Ukrainians now abroad passed through the city. The United Nations has called the situation the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

__ Lviv: A Russian general was killed in the fighting around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which Russian forces have been trying to seize since the invasion began, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said.

It identified him as Maj. Gen. Vitaly Gerasimov, 45, said he had fought with Russian forces in Syria and Chechnya and had taken part in the seizure of Crimea in 2014.

It was not possible to confirm the death independently. Russia has not commented.

Another Russian general was killed earlier in the fighting. A local officers’ organization in Russia confirmed the death in Ukraine of Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, the commanding general of the Russian 7th Airborne Division. Sukhovetsky also took part in Russia’s military campaign in Syria.

__ Canberra: The Australian government says it is placing sanctions on Moscow’s “propagandists and purveyors of disinformation” who legitimatize Russia’s invasion as the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in a statement on Tuesday her government was sanctioning 10 “people of strategic interest to Russia” for their role in encouraging hostility toward Ukraine.

“This includes driving and disseminating false narratives about the de-Nazification’ of Ukraine, making erroneous allegations of genocide against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, and promoting the recognition of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic as independent,” Payne said, referring to separatist regions of Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had been accompanied by a widespread disinformation campaign, both within Russia and internationally, she said.

“Tragically for Russia, President (Vladimir) Putin has shut down independent voices and locked everyday Russians into a world characterized by lies and disinformation,” Payne said.