Ukraine

LVIV, Ukraine/JERUSALEM, March 12 (Reuters) - Ukraine voiced hope on Saturday for positive results from Israel's bid to broker peace with Russia, denying a media report that suggested Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had tried to nudge Kyiv into caving to Moscow's demands.

Bennett, acting at Ukraine's behest, held a three-hour Kremlin meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Saturday. He has since spoken twice with Putin by phone and four times with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, officials say.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s airplanes and artillery widened their assault on Ukraine on Friday, striking airfields in the west and a major industrial hub in the east, as Moscow’s forces tried to regroup from recent losses and their onslaught fast reduced crowded cities to rubble.

11 March 2022; MEMO: Some 86 Turkish citizens are sheltering in a mosque in the besieged southern Ukrainian port of Mairupol, as Russian forces continue shelling the city, the Ukrainian Embassy in Ankara said today according to Reuters.

Citing local authorities, the embassy said Russian forces had been shelling the city, including the mosque, since the early morning hours. It said 34 of the Turkish citizens hiding there were children.

LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials accused Russia damaging a cancer hospital and several residential buildings in the southern city of Mykolaiv with shelling from heavy artillery.

The hospital’s head doctor, Maksim Beznosenko, said several hundred patients were in the hospital during the attack but that no one was killed. The assault damaged the building and blew out windows.

Russian forces have stepped up their attacks on Mykolaiv, located 470 kilometers (292 miles) south of Kyiv, in an attempt to encircle the city.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces appeared to make progress from northeast Ukraine in their slow fight to reach the capital, Kyiv, while tanks and artillery pounded places already under siege with shelling so heavy it prevented residents of one city from burying the growing number of dead.

10 March 2022; MEMO: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been refused permission to address members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, Walla news website has reported. Zelenskyy asked to speak to MKs via Zoom to present Ukraine's position on the Russian invasion.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia widened its military offensive in Ukraine on Friday, striking near airports in the west of the country for the first time as troops kept up pressure on the capital, Kyiv, and the U.S. and its allies prepared to revoke Russia’s favored trading status in a new punishment for the invasion.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Russia used high-precision long-range weapons Friday to put military airfields in Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk “out of action.” He did not provide details.

MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces kept up their bombardment of the port city of Mariupol on Thursday, while satellite photos showed that a massive convoy that had been mired outside the Ukrainian capital split up and fanned out into towns and forests near Kyiv, with artillery pieces moved into firing positions.

March 10 (Reuters) - Russia's energy ministry said on Thursday that Belarusian specialists had restored electricity supply to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

Chernobyl lost power amid fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces, after Russia invaded Ukraine.

MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — With bodies piling up in Russia’s nine-day siege of Mariupol, the port city of 430,000 in southeastern Ukraine, local authorities are hurrying to bury the dead in a mass grave.

City workers made quick signs of the cross gestures as they pushed bodies wrapped in carpets or bags into a deep trench some 25 meters (80 feet) long on the outskirts of the city.

More than 70 bodies have been interred in the common grave since it was opened Tuesday.