Fighting has reached the centre of the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, as attempts to rescue people trapped under the rubble of a bombed-out theatre were again hampered by Russian shelling.
The Russian defence ministry said its forces were “tightening the noose” around the city, and that “fighting against nationalists” was taking place in the city centre. Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, appeared to confirm the claims, telling the BBC that fighting was “really active”. “Tanks and machine-gun battles continue,” he said. “Everybody is hiding in bunkers.”
More than 350,000 civilians have been stranded with little food or water in Mariupol, which was under constant bombardment on Friday. Officials say that over 1,000 people may have been taking refuge in a bomb shelter underneath a theatre that was struck on Wednesday.
“More than 130 people have been saved,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an address on Facebook. “But hundreds of Mariupol residents are still beneath the rubble.” Zelenskiy vowed to continue the rescue operation “despite shelling” by Russian forces. Local officials said they did not have any information about the number who had been killed but one person was seriously injured.
In a call on Friday, Emmanuel Macron told Vladimir Putin that he is “extremely concerned” about the situation in Mariupol, according to the French presidential office.
The continued targeting of civilians in Mariupol, a strategically important city in Russia’s plan to link the separatist regions to the east via a corridor to Crimea, was said by the British military to be a sign of Russia’s failures in the first three weeks of the war.
Lt Gen Jim Hockenhull, chief of defence intelligence, said: “The Kremlin has so far failed to achieve its original objectives. It has been surprised by the scale and ferocity of Ukrainian resistance, and has been bedevilled with problems of its own making.
“Russian operations have changed. Russia is now pursuing a strategy of attrition. This will involve the reckless and indiscriminate use of firepower. This will result in increased civilian casualties, destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, and intensify the humanitarian crisis.
“Putin has reinforced his control over Russian domestic media. The Kremlin is attempting to control the narrative, hide operational problems and obscure high Russian casualty numbers from the Russian people.”
Anna, a 30-year-old photographer, managed to flee Mariupol on Tuesday, making it to the nearby town of Berdyansk, in a car whose windows had been smashed during Russian shelling.
“Today a missile hit the shelter where we had been staying,” she said. “One family had left just before the strike, but they didn’t have a car so they set out to walk with their children all the way to Mariupol. They got very lucky because a complete stranger who was driving to Mariupol to get his relatives had empty seats so they’ve made it out of the city.”
Boichenko said Mariupol “had no city centre left. There isn’t a small piece of land in the city that doesn’t have signs of war.”
Earlier in the day, a Russian missile attack near Lviv airport raised fears of Putin’s war spreading to western Ukraine. A facility for repairing military aircraft by Lviv’s international airport – only 43 miles from Poland’s border – was hit by two cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea.
Ukrainian officials said they had shot down a further four missiles launched in the attack, the second on facilities near the historic city in recent days. The strikes raised the spectre of Ukraine losing what has so far been a relative haven and hub for refugees and humanitarian aid.
There were also reports of mass casualties after a missile attack on a Ukrainian army barracks in the southern city of Mykolaiv.
In the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s state emergency service said a multi-storey teaching building had been shelled on Friday morning, killing one person, wounding 11 and trapping one other in the rubble.
Shells were also said to have struck the eastern city of Kramatorsk, killing two people and wounding six.
One person was killed and four others wounded after parts of a Russian missile fell on a residential building in the northern part of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Emergency services said 12 people had been rescued and 98 evacuated from the five-storey block.
The governor of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region said frequent and widespread shelling by Russian forces was preventing the safe evacuation of civilians from towns and villages on the frontline.
The attack near Lviv, where there were no reported casualties, will be a cause for concern for refugees and humanitarian agencies working in the city.
Russia has in recent days accused the west of exacerbating the war by supplying military aid via the western border, claiming such efforts were a legitimate military target.
James Heappey, a UK defence minister, said the attacks would not stand in the way of the British government and its allies from arming the Ukrainian forces.
He said: “It is very much a part of war that you go after each other’s supply lines. But the reality is this development will be a concern for people living in the west of Ukraine.”
Lviv, a Unesco world heritage site, had been largely untouched by bombings until Friday, although many of its 700,000 inhabitants had feared an attack was a matter of time.
The city has been described as the soul of Ukraine and a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism. Its citizens were among the strongest supporters of the country’s separation from the Soviet Union.
The developments followed accusations from the US, UK and EU that Russia was committing war crimes in Ukraine, while the French government accused Putin of pretending to be interested in a negotiated peace.
On Friday, Putin told the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, during a phone call that Kyiv was “attempting to stall peace talks” with Russia but Moscow was still keen to continue negotiations.