The war in Ukraine entered its fourth week on Thursday (17) with announced progress in negotiations with Russia, which continue virtually throughout the day, but without ceasing the bombings in civilian areas of the country’s largest cities.
In Kiev, the capital, one person died and three were injured after the remains of a downed Russian missile fell into a residential building, destroying two apartments, according to emergency services. About 30 residents were evacuated from the site.
The situation, say the Ukrainian Armed Forces, could have been worse. The military claims to have shot down at least ten Russian rockets and planes during the night and dawn in the capital’s sky, including a Russian Su-25 ground attack plane and a Su-35 fighter jet.
Searches also continue in a theater in Mariupol, a port city of 400,000 inhabitants under intense Russian bombardment, where a bomb would have hit a theater the day before, according to local authorities – Moscow denies the attack on civilians.
According to the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), the building housed at least 500 people, internally displaced people who were seeking shelter. Satellite images distributed by the US company Maxar Technologies, collected this week, show the word “children” drawn in the courtyard of the site.
HRW said that since confirming the information independently is difficult due to local conditions, it is not possible to rule out the possibility that there was also a military target there. Still, senior researcher Belkis Wille said the episode raised “serious concerns” about what the intended target was in a city where civilians have been under siege for days, and communications, power, water and heating services have been almost completely cut.
Ukrainian MP Dmitro Gurin, whose parents are in Mariupol, told the BBC that the building was destroyed, but that information suggested the bomb shelter may have been kept intact, so that those who took refuge there may have survived. The local government did not release casualty figures.
Although the bombings persist, the UK Ministry of Defense, in an intelligence report released overnight, said that the Russian military invasion is stagnant on all fronts. Russian forces have made minimal progress by land, sea or air in recent days and continue to suffer heavy losses, the document alleges.
On the diplomatic front, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky followed up on his speeches to congressmen to rally support for Kiev. This time, he spoke by video call to the Bundestag, Germany’s Parliament, and followed a formula similar to the one adopted the day before when he addressed US lawmakers: evoking history.
Speaking about the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Zelensky called on German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz to tear down the “wall between peace and conflict in Europe and stop the war in Ukraine”.
“Give Germany the leadership role it has won so that your descendants will be proud of you,” added the Ukrainian leader, who on Wednesday sent a similar message to Joe Biden.
Zelensky also said that Germany acted too late to stop the war from starting. “Why doesn’t ‘never again’ apply? What is Germany’s historical responsibility towards Ukraine today?”, asked the leader, referring to the historical past that unites the two countries – Ukraine was occupied by Nazi Germany and recorded, in its territory, remarkable episodes of the Holocaust.
