Ukraine has accused Russian forces of the heavy bombing of an improvised hospital in Mariupol, which had been sheltering around 300 people. Civilians - including children - were among those receiving treatment there, Ukrainian authorities say.
A steel plant had been converted into a makeshift hospital to treat wounded troops, as well as ordinary citizens of the devastated port city. Ukraine's deputy commander of the Azov regiment, who was among the troops remaining in Mariupol, said the Russian military dropped heavy bombs, hitting the “improvised” hospital.
Serhiy Taruta, the former governor of the Donetsk region and a Mariupol native, also reported the bombing of the hospital. But the reports could not be independently confirmed.
The eastern cities of Kharkiv and Kramatorsk also came under deadly attack, in a renewed Russian offence. Russia also said it struck areas around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro west of the Donbas with missiles.
Zelensky accuses Putin's Russian forces of being 'inhuman'
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Russian military was throwing everything it has into the battle, with most of its combat-ready forces now concentrated in Ukraine and just across the border in Russia. “They have driven almost everyone and everything that is capable of fighting us against Ukraine,” he said in his nightly video address to the nation on Tuesday (April 19).
Despite claims that they are hitting only military sites, the Russians continue to target residential areas and kill civilians, he said. “The Russian army in this war is writing itself into world history forever as the most barbaric and inhuman army in the world,” Mr Zelensky said.
Weeks ago, after the abortive Russian push to take Kyiv, the Kremlin declared that its main goal was the capture of the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years. A Russian victory in the Donbas would deprive Ukraine of the industrial assets concentrated there, including mines, metals plants and heavy-equipment factories. Military experts said the Russians’ goal is to encircle Ukrainian troops from the north, south and east.
President Zelensky has said Ukraine is open to a diplomatic solution to the war. But the country is not prepared to surrender its territory.
Why Mariupol is key to Russia's revised goals in the east
Key to the campaign is the capture of Mariupol, which would deprive Ukraine of a vital port and complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, seized from Ukraine in 2014. It would also free up Russian troops to move elsewhere in the Donbas.
A few thousand Ukrainian troops, by the Russians’ estimate, remained holed up in a sprawling Mariupol steel plant, representing what was believed to be the last major pocket of resistance in the city. Russia issued a new ultimatum to the Ukrainian defenders to surrender on Wednesday after a previous ultimatum was ignored.
The Russian Defence Ministry said those who surrender will be allowed to live and given medical treatment. There was no immediate response from the Ukrainian troops, but they have repeatedly vowed not to give up.
