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Russia widens Ukraine attack

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Russia has widened its assault on Ukraine, striking airfields in the west and a major industrial hub in the east, as Moscow’s forces tried to regroup from recent losses.

New satellite images appeared to show artillery firing on residential areas between Russian forces and the Ukraine capital.

The images from Maxar Technologies showed muzzle flashes and smoke from the big guns, as well as impact craters and burning homes in the town of Moschun, outside Kyiv, the company said.

In a devastated village east of the capital, people climbed over toppled walls and flapping metal strips in the remnants of a pool hall, restaurant and theatre blown apart by Russian bombs.

On the economic and political front, the US and its allies moved to further isolate and sanction the Kremlin.

President Joe Biden announced that the US will dramatically downgrade its trade status with Russia and also ban imports of Russian seafood, alcohol and diamonds.

The move to revoke Russia’s “most favoured nation” status was taken in coordination with the European Union and Group of Seven countries.

“The free world is coming together to confront Putin,” Biden said.

On the ground, Russia’s forces appeared to be trying to regain momentum after encountering stiffer resistance than anticipated over the past two weeks.

“It’s ugly already, but it’s going to get worse,” said Nick Reynolds, a warfare analyst at Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.

With the invasion in its 16th day, Putin said there had been “certain positive developments” in Russia-Ukraine talks, but gave no details.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed Ukrainian forces had “reached a strategic turning point,” though he did not elaborate.

Zelenskyy said authorities were working on establishing 12 humanitarian corridors and trying to ensure food, medicine and other basics get to people across the country.

Thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been killed in the invasion, along with Ukrainian civilians.

He accused Russia of kidnapping the mayor of one city, Melitopol, calling the abduction “a new stage of terror.”

Russian airstrikes targeted for the first time Dnipro, a major industrial hub in the east and Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, with about 1 million people.

One person was killed, Ukrainian officials said.

The bombardment continued in Mariupol, where a deadly strike on a maternity hospital this week sparked international outrage and war-crime allegations.

Unrelenting attacks have thwarted attempts to send in food and medicine and evacuate civilians from Mariupol, a city of 430,000.

The local mayor’s office said on Friday the death toll there had risen to 1,582.

Elsewhere, temperatures were forecast to hit -13 degrees Celsius in the eastern city of Kharkiv, which has come under heavy bombardment.

About 400 apartment buildings in Kharkiv lost heat, and residents were urged to descend into the subway or other underground shelters where blankets and hot food were being distributed.

Hundreds of miles to the south of Kyiv, at Mykolaiv, shelling damaged a cancer hospital, according to the head doctor, Maksim Beznosenko. No one was killed.

The United Nations says it has verified 26 attacks on medical centres, medical workers or ambulances since the invasion began, with 12 people killed.

The UN political chief said the international organisation had received credible reports that Russian forces were using cluster bombs in populated areas.

The bombs scatter smaller explosives over a wide area and are prohibited in cities and towns under international law.

Russians and Ukrainians have held multiple rounds of talks near the Belarus border, and the two countries’ foreign ministers met again on  Thursday with no apparent progress. 

Some 2.5 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began, according to the United Nations.

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