Ukraine

LVIV, Ukraine, March 26 (Reuters) - The mayor of Ukraine's northern city of Chernihiv said on Saturday 44 severely wounded people, including three children, could not be evacuated to safer areas for treatment since the city had been cut off by Russian forces.

The city near the Belarusian border has been effectively surrounded, local authorities said on Friday, warning that it had become impossible to evacuate civilians or bring in humanitarian aid because a bridge linking the city to Ukraine's capital to the south had been destroyed by bombing.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Nights are spent huddling underground from Russian strikes pounding their encircled city into rubble. Daylight hours are devoted to hunting down drinkable water and running the risk of standing in line for the little food available as shells and bombs rain down.

This is what now passes for life in Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine where death is everywhere. It isn’t — yet — quite as synonymous with atrocious human suffering as the pulverized southern city of Mariupol has become in the 31 days since Russia invaded Ukraine.

March 25 (Reuters) - Ukraine's nuclear energy authority on Friday published a video of what it said were four Russian guards who had accompanied a delivery of fuel elements, visibly uncomfortable as they made statements criticising Russia's military operation in Ukraine.

The authority, Energoatom, said on its Telegram channel that the men had accompanied a shipment of Russian fuel rods to Ukraine's Rivne nuclear plant last month.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — About 300 people were killed in the Russian airstrike last week on a Mariupol theater 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.

The bloodshed is certain to certain to fuel allegations Moscow has committed war crimes by killing civilians, whether deliberately or by indiscriminate fire.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine President Volodymr Zelenskyy called on people worldwide to gather in public Thursday to show support for his embattled country as he prepared to address U.S. President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders gathered in Brussels on the one-month anniversary of the Russian invasion.

LVIV, March 23 (Reuters) - The war in Ukraine has killed 121 children so far, the office of the prosecutor general said on Wednesday in a message on the Telegram app, adding that the number of wounded children stood at 167.

Reuters could not immediately verify the details.

(AP) --- The humanitarian needs of more than 10 million displaced Ukrainians have quickly become staggering. Yet Mark Malloch-Brown, president of the Open Society Foundations, warns that longer-term problems resulting from Russia’s invasion will grow ever larger if they aren’t sufficiently addressed now.

Experts report an “unprecedented” outpouring of aid for food, medicine and other essential needs of Ukrainians. Comparatively few donations, though, have been earmarked for maintaining Ukraine’s culture or democratic foundations.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian leaders accused Russia of seizing 15 rescue workers and drivers from a humanitarian convoy trying to get desperately needed food and other supplies into the bloodied port city of Mariupol, which also came under naval attack after weeks of air and land strikes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy estimated that 100,000 civilians remained in Mariupol, scene of some of the war’s worst devastation, as Russia presses a nearly month-old offensive by bombarding cities and towns. Those made it out described a shattered city.

LVIV, Ukraine, March 22 (Reuters) - Ukraine's president said on Tuesday there was "nothing left" of the city of Mariupol after weeks of Russian bombardment, and Kyiv appealed to Moscow to allow the evacuation of at least 100,000 people who want to leave.

Ukraine has issued increasingly dire warnings about the situation in the encircled southern port city, where officials say residents are without food, medicine, power or running water. 

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — As Mariupol’s defenders held out Monday against Russian demands that they surrender, the number of bodies in the rubble of the bombarded and encircled Ukrainian city remained shrouded in uncertainty, the full extent of the horror not yet known.

With communications crippled, movement restricted and many residents in hiding, the fate of those inside an art school flattened on Sunday and a theater that was blown apart four days earlier was unclear.