Live: Zelenskyy slams Russia ‘war crime’ over Mariupol hospital strike
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on the West to impose even tougher sanctions on Russia after the airstrike on the maternity hospital in Mariupol, which he described as a “war crime”.
“A genocide of Ukrainians is taking place,” Zelenskyy said Wednesday in his daily late evening video address to the nation. Wearing his now traditional wartime army green, he said the West should strengthen the sanctions so Russia “no longer has any possibility to continue this genocide.”
“What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, is afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?” Zelenskyy said in a televised address late on Wednesday.
He said 17 people were injured in the attack, including pregnant women. The city council said the hospital suffered “colossal” damage.
The White House condemned the hospital bombing as a “barbaric use of military force to go after innocent civilians”.
Mariupol has been blockaded by Russian troops for nine days. City officials said Wednesday that about 1,200 residents have been killed.
Zelenskyy again called on Western leaders to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, something NATO members have refused to do for fear of provoking a wider war with Russia. Short of that, Zelenskyy called for the delivery of more fighter jets to Ukraine, a proposal the Pentagon rejected on Wednesday.
Zelenskyy said about 35,000 civilians have used humanitarian corridors to flee to western Ukraine to escape the fighting.
(AP, AFP, Reuters)
Read AP’s account of the attack here:
