Thousands of residents of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol have been taken by force to Russia, local authorities have claimed.
“Over the past week, several thousand Mariupol residents were deported onto the Russian territory,” the city council said in a statement on its Telegram channel late on Saturday.
Russian news agencies reported that buses have carried hundreds of people Moscow calls “refugees” from Mariupol to Russia in recent days.
The council also said Russian forces bombed a Mariupol art school on Saturday in which 400 residents had taken shelter, but the number of casualties was not yet known.
Russia has denied targeting civilians.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia’s siege of the port city of Mariupol was “a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come”.
Many of Mariupol’s 400,000 residents have been trapped for more than two weeks as Russia seeks to take control of the city, which would help secure a land corridor to the Crimea peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
President Vladimir Putin calls the assault on Ukraine, which began on February 24, a “special operation” aimed at demilitarising the country and rooting out people he terms dangerous nationalists.
Western nations call it an aggressive war of choice and have imposed punishing sanctions on Russia aimed at crippling its economy.
The Mariupol bombardment has left buildings in rubble and severed central supplies of electricity, heating and water, according to local authorities.
Rescue workers were still searching for survivors in a Mariupol theatre that local authorities say was flattened by Russian air strikes on Wednesday. Russia denies hitting the theatre.
Zelensky said the siege of Mariupol would “go down in history of responsibility for war crimes”.
“To do this to a peaceful city... is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come,” he said in a late night broadcast.
Still, he said, peace talks with Russia were needed although they were “not easy and pleasant”.
Russia struck Ukraine with cruise missiles from ships in the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and launched hypersonic missiles from Crimean airspace, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday. Air raid sirens sounded across Ukrainian cities.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said seven humanitarian corridors would open on Sunday to enable civilians to leave frontline areas. Ukraine has so far evacuated a total of 190,000 people from such areas, Vereshchuk said on Saturday.
The U.N. human rights office said at least 847 civilians had been killed and 1,399 wounded in Ukraine as of Friday. The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said that 112 children have been killed.
Russian forces have taken heavy losses since the start of the invasion. Long columns of troops that bore down on the capital Kyiv have been halted in the suburbs.
Ukraine’s military said Russian forces did not conduct offensive ground operations on Saturday, focusing instead on replenishing supplies and repairing equipment. It also said Ukrainian air defences shot down three Russian combat helicopters.
On Saturday, Russia said its hypersonic missiles had destroyed a large underground depot for missiles and aircraft ammunition in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region. Hypersonic weapons can travel faster than five times the speed of sound, and the Interfax agency said it was the first time Russia had used them in Ukraine.
A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force Command confirmed the attack, but said the Ukrainian side had no information on the type of missiles used.
In Syria, some paramilitary fighters say they were ready to deploy to Ukraine to fight in support of their ally Russia but have not yet received instructions to go.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow expected its operation in Ukraine to end with the signing of a comprehensive agreement on security issues, including Ukraine’s neutral status, Interfax reported.
Kyiv and Moscow reported some progress in talks last week toward a political formula that would guarantee Ukraine’s security, while keeping it outside Nato, though each sides accused the other of dragging things out.
Zelensky has said Ukraine could accept international security guarantees that stopped short of its longstanding aim to join Nato. That prospect has been one of Russia’s primary stated concerns.
The foreign minister of Turkey, one of several countries that have sought to mediate, said Russia and Ukraine were getting closer to an agreement on “critical” issues and have nearly agreed on some subjects.
Mevlut Cavusoglu also said that he was hopeful for a ceasefire if the sides don’t take a step back from the progress they have made toward an agreement.
