MARIUPOL, Ukraine — Officials say 130 people have been rescued from the ruins of a theater that served as a shelter when it was blasted by a Russian airstrike Wednesday in the besieged southern city of Mariupol.
Ludmyla Denisova, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, said Friday that 130 people had survived the theater bombing.
“As of now, we know that 130 people have been evacuated, but according to our data, there are still more than 1,300 people in these basements, in this bomb shelter,” Denisova told Ukrainian television. “We pray that they will all be alive, but so far there is no information about them.”
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:
— Russia has attacked the outskirts of the western city of Lviv, a crossroads for people fleeing the war and for others entering to deliver aid or fight.
— President Vladimir Putin appeared at a huge patriotic rally in Moscow and praised the Russian military
— Rescuers search for survivors at a Mariupol theater hit by Russian airstrike; 130 rescued, hundreds still missing
— World leaders called anew for an investigation of Russia’s repeat attacks on civilian targets
— Go to https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine for more coverage
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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS TODAY:
ATHENS, Greece — Greece’s prime minister is offering to rebuild the maternity hospital in Mariupol that was bombed by Russian forces last week.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis tweeted Friday that “Greece is ready to rebuild the maternity hospital in Mariupol, the center of the Greek minority in Ukraine.”
Some 100,000 people of Greek origin were living in the besieged city before the Russian invasion.
Mitsotakis called Mariupol “a city dear to our hearts and symbol of the barbarity of the war.”
Associated Press journalists documented the attack and saw the victims and damage firsthand. They shot video and photos of several bloodstained, pregnant mothers fleeing the blown-out maternity ward as medical workers shouted and children cried.
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HELSINKI — The Finnish government has begun posting information in Russian about the invasion of Ukraine.
“We ... want to provide Russian speakers with fact-based information from the authorities,” the Finnish government tweeted Friday.
The move comes in the face of a Russian propaganda and disinformation campaign that aims to strengthen domestic support for the invasion and undermine the resolve of Ukrainians.
The website of the Finnish government is available in Finnish and Swedish — the Nordic country’s two official languages — and in English.
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President Vladimir Putin appeared at a huge patriotic rally Friday at a Moscow stadium on the eighth anniversary of the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.
Putin, speaking to a crowd of tens of thousands of people waving Russian flags at the Luzhniki Stadium, praised the Russian military for its actions in Ukraine.
“Shoulder to shoulder, they help and support each other,” Putin said in a rare public appearance. “We have not had unity like this for a long time,” he added to cheers from the crowd.
Before Putin spoke, bands played patriotic Soviet songs about national identity and speakers praised Putin as fighting “Nazism” in Ukraine, a claim flatly rejected by leaders across the globe.
Some people, including presenters at the event, wore T-shirts or jackets with a “Z” — a symbol seen on Russian tanks and military vehicles in Ukraine and embraced by supporters of the war.
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ROME — Pope Francis has denounced the “perverse abuse of power” on display in Russia’s war in Ukraine. He is calling for aid to Ukrainians who he said had been attacked in their “identity, history and tradition” and were “defending their land.”
Francis’ comments, in a message Friday to a gathering of European Catholic representatives, marked some of his strongest yet in asserting Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign state and to defend itself against Russia’s invasion.
It came just days after Francis told the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, that the concept of a “just war” was obsolete since wars are never justifiable and that pastors must preach peace, not politics.
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WARSAW, Poland – Poland’s border agency says that the 2 million mark for the number of Ukrainian refugees who have fled to Poland was reached Friday morning.
A European Union nation of some 38 million people, Poland has become the main destination for people fleeing war in neighboring, non-EU Ukraine, with which Poland shares almost 540 kilometers (335 miles) of border.
The first refugees came Feb. 24, when Russian troops invaded Ukraine. They are chiefly women and children, because men aged 18-60 have been banned from leaving Ukraine to be available to fight in the country’s defense.
The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, said Friday that more than 3.27 million people have fled Ukraine, a nation of some 44 million, since Russia’s attack.
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GENEVA — The U.N. refugee agency says it’s noticing a slowdown in the number of people fleeing Ukraine, though its estimate of internally displaced people from the fighting has soared in the wake of evacuations from embattled cities like Mariupol and Sumy.
Speaking by video conference from Poland, UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh said the number of refugee arrivals, “particularly here in Poland, has been falling in recent days.” Some of those fleeing the violence may have been “recuperating” in the western city of Lviv and “waiting to see whether they should cross the border or not.”
Saltmarsh said UNHCR’s latest estimate of people internally displaced in Ukraine was now above 2 million. He said it was not possible to estimate how many of those might travel abroad. UNHCR has previously projected that 4 million people, or more, could flee Ukraine.
In Poland, which has taken about two-thirds of the some 3.2 million refugees from Ukraine, those arriving in recent days appear “more traumatized” and “in shock,” Saltmarsh said, and often come without a plan for where to go.
More than 93,000 people fled Ukraine on Thursday, according to UNCHR, the lowest single-day figure since fighting began on Feb. 24. That was down from peaks of more than 200,000 daily on two consecutive days in early March.
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VILNIUS, Lithuania — Three Baltic countries have ordered the expulsion of Russian embassy staff members in a coordinated action taken in solidarity with Ukraine.
Lithuania’s foreign ministry said on Friday that four Russian embassy staff are no longer welcome in the country, while in neighboring Latvia, three Russian staff were declared persona non grata.
Russia’s ambassador to Lithuania, Aleksei Isakov, was informed that their activities were incompatible with the status of a diplomat, according to the official statement of the Lithuanian foreign ministry.
“Lithuania has made such a decision in solidarity with Ukraine, which is experiencing unprecedented Russian military aggression” the statement reads.
Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said that the expulsion of the embassy staff was a coordinated action of the Baltic States, which include former Soviet republics Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Estonia also announced on Friday that it was ordering three staff of the Russian Embassy in the capital Tallinn to leave the country.
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BUCHAREST, Romania — A 35-year-old Romanian soldier died in an accident Friday during a tank driving exercise at the country’s western Smardan military facility, Romania’s ministry of defense said.
“The soldier coordinated maneuvers in order to start moving a tank,” the ministry’s statement reads, “at which point he was caught between the moving tank.”
Emergency services were called to the scene but the soldier, who was married and had been employed by the Romanian military since 2008, died of his injuries.
Romania’s Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca sent condolences to the deceased soldier’s family, writing online that “a routine training activity turned into a tragedy” and that a “young man lost his life in the line of duty.”
The Smardan military base in Galati County has been used for NATO training exercises as recently as March 8, after the alliance bolstered forces in response to Russian aggression in neighboring Ukraine.
County police are conducting on-the-spot investigations and military prosecutors have been informed about the fatal accident.
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SOFIA, Bulgaria — Bulgaria says it has declared 10 Russian diplomats “persona non grata” and demanded their expulsion.
In a statement on Friday, Bulgaria’s foreign ministry said that Bulgaria’s prime minister Kiril Petkov had been consulted on the expulsions.
An official note was handed to Russia’s ambassador in the capital Sofia requiring that the diplomats leave Bulgaria within 72 hours over their alleged involvement in “activities incompatible with their diplomatic status,” the statement said.
European Union and NATO member Bulgaria, which was one of Moscow’s closest allies in the Soviet bloc, has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has expelled 10 other Russian diplomats suspected of espionage since October 2019.
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WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki says that Poland will formally submit a proposal for a peacekeeping and humanitarian mission on Ukraine’s territory at next week’s extraordinary NATO summit.
Morawiecki stressed Friday that Poland had already made the proposal during a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Wednesday. Denmark has expressed readiness to join such a mission.
The idea for a NATO or wider international peacekeeping mission under military protection was launched by Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski during a visit to Kyiv on Tuesday by the leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia.
Kaczynski, who is Poland’s ruling party leader and the country’s key politician, stressed in Kyiv that the mission would be in line with international law and would not constitute any form of hostile action.
NATO leaders have been opposed to the alliance’s presence in Ukraine over concerns it could escalate the conflict.
Danish Defense Minister Morten Bødskov said Wednesday that “if it comes to that, Denmark is ready to contribute. We have decades of experience in this field of work, and I definitely think that Denmark can contribute to this and make a difference.”
President Joe Biden is to attend the NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday that will focus on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and European security.
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VILNIUS, Lithuania — Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said Friday that NATO’s entire defense of its eastern flank “must be rewritten strategically,” and that few had thought Russia "had aggressive intentions at the level we see now.”
Landsbergis said that NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg had already announced a review of the military alliance's security strategy in the east in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Lithuania, a Baltic nation which is a member of NATO, shares land borders with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, and with Belarus, a Moscow ally.
Landsbergis said that Russia "has proven that it is a country willing to cross all borders.” He added that before the invasion, “many of us were sure that deterrence was enough.”
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BERLIN — German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has indicated that her country should consider imposing an oil embargo on Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.
In a security policy speech Friday, she said it was important to take a stance and not remain silent due to economic or energy dependency.
“Even if it’s difficult, including on questions now with regard to oil or other embargoes,” said Baerbock.
Germany receives about a third of its oil from Russia and half of its coal and natural gas.
Baerbock also warned against China’s growing influence over energy infrastructure in Africa and Asia, saying Germany will soon propose a new strategy on dealing with Beijing.
AP
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