Ukrainian President Zelenskiy said Russia’s siege of Mariupol was “a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come”, while authorities in the strategic port city said thousands of residents there had been taken by force to Russia.
FIGHTING, DIPLOMACY
* Zelenskiy urged Switzerland to crack down on Russian oligarchs who he said were helping to wage war on his country from the safety of “beautiful Swiss towns”.
* After Biden’s warned Xi of “consequences” if China should provide material support to Russia’s war effort, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing has “always stood for maintaining peace and opposing war” and that “time will prove that China’s claims are on the right side of history.”
* Russian President Putin is healthy, sane and “in better shape than ever”, close ally Belarus President Lukashenko told Japanese TV.
* Russia said it had used hypersonic Kinzhal (Dagger) missiles to destroy a large weapons depot in Ukraine’s western Ivano-Frankivsk region.
* A Russian mortar attack on Ukrainian town of Makariv in the Kyiv region killed seven people and hospitalised five on Friday, local police said in a statement. Russia denies targeting civilians.
* A senior Chinese government official said that sanctions imposed by Western nations on Russia are increasingly “outrageous”.
CIVILIANS
* Pope Francis made a surprise visit to young refugees being treated in a paediatric hospital in Rome.
* The U.N. human rights office said at least 847 civilians had been killed and 1,399 wounded in Ukraine as of Friday. The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said that 112 children have been killed.
ECONOMY AND MARKETS
* Ukraine may not produce enough crops to export if this year’s sowing campaigns are disrupted by the invasion, presidential adviser Oleh Ustenko said.
SPACE SUITS
* Russia’s space agency dismissed Western media reports suggesting Russian cosmonauts joining the International Space Station had chosen to wear yellow suits with a blue trim in support of Ukraine. “Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’s press service said on its Telegram channel.
QUOTES
* “To do this to a peaceful city… is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come,” Zelenskiy said of Russia’s attacks on Mariupol.
* “When the alarm sounded, I covered the windows with blankets so one couldn’t hear it. My small ones made up a monster, the siren monster,” said Tanya, a refugee in the Polish border town of Przemysl.
(Compiled by Frances Kerry and William Mallard)
