ZAPORIZHE, Ukraine (AP) – Dozens of Ukrainians were killed Sunday after a Russian bomb destroyed a school where about 90 people took refuge in a basement as Ukrainian fighters detained at a Mariupol steel plant as Moscow forces apparently raced to take the city. before the celebration of Russian Victory Day.
Emergency crews found two bodies and rescued 30 people at a school in the village of Bilogorovka after Saturday’s bombing, according to the governor of Luhansk province, part of the eastern industrial center known as Donbass.
“Most likely, all 60 people left under the rubble are already dead,” Governor Sergei Haidai wrote in the Telegram news app. Two 11- and 14-year-old boys were also killed in the Russian shelling in the nearby town of Privilege, he said.
As Moscow prepared to celebrate the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945 with a military parade on Monday, Victory Day, a group of Western leaders and celebrities paid surprise visits to Ukraine in a show of support.
US First Lady Jill Biden met with her Ukrainian counterpart. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hoisted his country’s flag at its embassy in Kyiv. And Bono from U2, along with a colleague from the band The Edge, performed at a metro station in Kyiv, which was used as a bomb shelter, singing the song from the 60’s “Stand by Me”.
Newly appointed caretaker US Ambassador to Ukraine Christina Quien posted a photo of herself at the US Embassy, trumpeting plans for a possible US return to the Ukrainian capital after Moscow’s forces abandoned efforts to storm Kyiv weeks ago and began to focus. on the capture of Donbass.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and others have warned in recent days that Russian attacks will only get worse before Victory Day, and some cities have announced a curfew or warned people not to gather in public. It is believed that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to declare some kind of triumph in Ukraine when he addresses the troops in Red Square.
“They have nothing to celebrate tomorrow,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, told CNN. “They failed to defeat the Ukrainians. They have failed to divide the world or NATO. And they only managed to isolate themselves internationally and become a pariah country around the world. “
Russian forces struggled to complete the conquest of Mariupol, which has largely been reduced to rubble. The vast coastal steel factory, where about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters were building what appeared to be their last post, was the only part of the city that was not under Russian control.
The last women, children and elderly civilians who took refuge with the fighters at the Azovstal plant were evacuated on Saturday. Buses carrying more than 170 evacuees from the steel plant and other parts of Mariupol arrived in the Ukrainian city of Zaporozhye on Sunday, UN officials said.
Ukrainian defenders at the steel plant have rejected the deadlines set by the Russians for laying down their arms.
Captain Svyatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Ukrainian Regiment, a unit holding the steel plant, said the site had been attacked overnight by fighter jets, artillery and tanks.
“We are under constant fire,” he said online, adding that Russian ground forces had tried to storm the plant – a claim denied by Russian authorities in recent days – and planted mines. Palamar reported “many casualties”.
Lieutenant Iliya Samoilenko, another member of the Azov Regiment, said there were several hundred wounded soldiers at the plant, but declined to say how many combat-ready fighters remained. He said the fighters did not have life-saving equipment and had to dig by hand to free people from bunkers that had collapsed under fire.
“For us, capitulation is unacceptable because we cannot give such a gift to the enemy,” Samoilenko said.
The Ukrainian government has turned to international organizations to try to ensure the safe passage of defenders.
On the economic front, the leaders of the Group of Seven Industrial Democracies have pledged to ban or phase out Russian oil imports. The G-7 consists of the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Japan.
The United States has also announced new sanctions against Russia, cutting off Western advertising on Russia’s three largest television stations, banning US accounting and consulting firms from providing services, and cutting off Russia’s industrial sector from wood products, industrial engines, boilers and bulldozers.
Trudeau met with Zelensky and made a surprise visit to Irpin, which was damaged in Russia’s attempt to take Kyiv. The Ukrainian president also met with German Parliament Speaker Berbel Bass in Kyiv to discuss further defense assistance.
Jill Biden visited western Ukraine for a surprise Mother’s Day meeting with Zelensky’s wife, Olena Zelenska.
Zelensky released a video on the day of the Allied victory in Europe 77 years ago, drawing parallels between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the evils of Nazism. Black-and-white footage shows Zelensky standing in front of a ruined apartment building in Borodyanka, a suburb of Kyiv.
Zelensky said generations of Ukrainians understood the meaning of the words “Never Again,” a phrase often used as a vow to prevent a repeat of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Elsewhere, off the coast of Ukraine, explosions erupted again in the large Black Sea port of Odessa. According to local media, at least five explosions were heard.
The Ukrainian military said Moscow was focusing its main efforts on destroying airport infrastructure in eastern and southern Ukraine.
In a sign of stubborn resistance to the 11th week of fighting, the Ukrainian military is attacking Russian positions on a Black Sea island captured in the early days of the war. A satellite image of Planet Labs shows smoke rising from two places on the island.
But Moscow’s forces showed no signs of retreating south. Satellite images show Russia has deployed armored vehicles and missile systems at a small base on the Crimean peninsula.
The most intense battles in recent days are being fought in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian counter-offensive in the northeast near Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, has made “significant progress,” according to the Institute for War Studies, a think tank in Washington.
However, the Ukrainian army withdrew from the shattered eastern city of Popasna, regional authorities said.
Rodion Miroshnik, a representative of the pro-Kremlin, separatist Luhansk People’s Republic, said its forces and Russian troops had captured most of Popasna after two months of fierce fighting.
The Kharkiv Regional Administration said three people were killed in the shelling of the town of Bohodukhov, about 50km (30 miles) from the town of Kharkiv.
South of Kharkov, in the province of Dnepropetrovsk, the governor said a 12-year-old boy had been killed by cluster munitions he found after a Russian attack. An international treaty bans the use of such explosives, but neither Russia nor Ukraine has signed the agreement.
“This war is insidious,” Governor Valentin Reznichenko wrote on social media. “He’s close, even when he’s invisible.”
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Gambrell reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Jessica Fish in Bakhmut, David Keaton in Kyiv, Juras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstislav Chernov in Kharkov, Lolita S. Baldor in Washington and PA officials around the world contributed to this report.
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