Russia widened its military offensive in Ukraine on Friday, striking near airports in the west of the country for the first time.
With the invasion now in its third week, the U.S. and its allies prepared to step up their efforts to isolate and sanction Russia by revoking its most favored trading status. The move comes amid mounting outrage after a deadly airstrike hit a maternity hospital in the key Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, under an increasingly constricting 10-day-old siege.
The 40-mile line of vehicles, tanks and artillery had massed outside the city early last week, but its advance appeared to stall as reports of food and fuel shortages circulated. U.S. officials said Ukrainian troops also targeted the convoy with anti-tank missiles. The British Ministry of Defense said that after making “limited progress” because of logistical mishaps and Ukrainian resistance, Russian forces were trying to “re-set and re-posture” their troops, gearing up for operations against Kyiv.Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia knew of “more than 16,000 applications” from countries in the Middle East, many of them from people who he said had helped Russia against the Islamic State group, according to a Kremlin transcript.
Russian airstrikes also targeted for the first time the eastern city of Dnipro, a major industrial hub and Ukraine’s fourth-largest city in a strategic position on the Dnieper River. Three strikes hit early Friday, killing at least one person, according to Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser Anton Heraschenko.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Russian-backed fighters have advanced up to 800 meters of Mariupol from the east, north and west, further squeezing the city which has the Azov Sea to its south. Konashenkov said the advance was being conducted by fighters from the separatist-held Donetsk region, the standard Russian line for fighting in the east.
“They have a clear order to hold Mariupol hostage, to mock it, to constantly bomb and shell it,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation Thursday.
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