Ukrainian has accused Russia of bombing a hospital sheltering up to 300 people in the besieged city of Mariupol. The deputy commander of the Azov regiment said that the Russian military dropped heavy bombs on the steel plant and hit an “improvised hospital”.
Russia launched a war on Ukraine on February 24. However, according to the latest updates, Russia has given Mariupol a fresh ultimatum to surrender for 2pm today. In a statement issued early on Wednesday morning, the Russian defence ministry said its forces opened a humanitarian corridor from the Azovstal plant “for the withdrawal of Ukrainian servicemen” to “voluntarily lay down their arms” as well as to evacuate civilians. A commander for the Ukrainian marines fighting in Mariupol said his forces were “maybe facing our last days, if not hours” and appealed for extraction in video message published to his Facebook account early on Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said the intensity of fire by Russian troops towards Kharkiv, the Donbas and in Dnipro has “increased significantly”, one day after the Kremlin launched its long-anticipated offensive in eastern Ukraine.