Ukraine continues to denounce Russian attacks on civilians as talks continue
Ukraine continues to show that Russia is attacking civilian targets in the war on Ukrainian territory, although the Russian government continues to claim that civilians are not the target of its offensives.
The focus now is on a theatre in Mariupol, where more than 1,000 people were sheltering and which came under Russian bombardment, a city that is under heavy siege as a major port enclave in southeastern Ukraine.
Serhiy Orlov, deputy mayor of Mariupol, confirmed to the BBC that Russian shelling had hit the city's theatre where between 1,000 and 1,200 civilians were sheltering, according to local sources, without specifying the exact number of casualties.
However, a Ukrainian parliamentarian stated that most of the people who were in the air-raid shelter survived because the facility held out, as reported by RTVE.
Attacks on hospitals, schools and residential buildings have become a constant feature of Ukrainian territory, as Ukrainian official sources continue to denounce. Despite the fact that the Russian state continues to claim that it is not targeting civilians in the war on Ukrainian territory.
"It is impossible to find words that can describe the level of cruelty and cynicism with which the Russian aggressors are destroying the civilian population (...) Women, children and the elderly are in the enemy's sights. These are completely unarmed peaceful people. It is obvious that the sole aim of the Russian army is the genocide of the Ukrainian people", according to local authorities in a statement, as reported by ABC.
The Russian Defence Ministry denied having carried out an air strike against a theatre in Mariupol, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
Ukraine's State Communications Service also said that at least ten people were killed in a Russian attack on people queuing for bread in the city of Chernigov.
"In Chernobyl, Russian troops fired at people queuing for bread: at least 10 dead," the State Communications Service said on Twitter. Other sources put the death toll at 13.
The capital of Kiev also continues to come under sustained attack, with at least one dead and three wounded in a recent attack on a residential building in the city's Darnytskyi district, as reported by the Huffington Post.
As the Russian army's offensive on Ukraine continues, talks continue between the parties involved in negotiations to end the conflict over Ukrainian territory.
The Russian side demands a Ukraine outside NATO, with no foreign military bases and a limited army of its own that does not pose a threat to its borders. The nation led by Vladimir Putin also calls for Crimea to be recognised as part of Russian territory and for full recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, which had already proclaimed themselves as such in confrontation with the Ukrainian government and are based in the Donbas, a territory that has always been a sticking point since Russia decided to annex the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
The latter clashes with a negotiating point that Ukraine is demanding, namely respect for its territorial integrity. Ukraine also demands that Russian troops leave the country entirely in order to accede to Russian demands.
On the NATO issue, there is a rapprochement because Ukraine's own president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has already acknowledged that it is impossible to join the Atlantic Alliance.
Negotiations are not easy, and it seems that there are points that have not yet come to light, but there is some hope and rapprochement that could put an end to an undesirable war on Ukrainian territory.
The most immediate goal is to put an end to the rising death and refugee figures. Romania and Poland remain the two main countries hosting refugees affected by the war in Ukraine, with the number of displaced people fleeing the war offensives now reaching 3 million, according to UNHCR. Almost 2 million of them have landed in Poland, of whom half a million have already left for other central European countries, including Spain.