Russia says claim it bombed children's hospital is 'fake news'
A woman walks outside the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Russia has said that a Ukrainian claim that it bombed a children's hospital in Mariupol was "fake news" because the building was a former maternity hospital that had long been taken over by troops.
"That’s how fake news is born," Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia's first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Twitter.
Polyanskiy said Russia had warned on March 7 that the hospital had been turned into a military object from which Ukrainians were firing.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of carrying out genocide after Ukrainian officials said Russian aircraft bombed the children's hospital on Wednesday.
Russia's war in Ukraine enters the third week on Thursday with none of its key objectives reached despite thousands of people killed, more than two million made refugees, and thousands forced to cower in besieged cities under relentless bombardment.
Ukrainian forces including citizen-soldiers who only last month never dreamed of firing a weapon in anger were holding out in Kyiv and other frontlines, while Russian troops, tanks and artillery made slow progress from the north, south and east.
Moscow's stated objectives of crushing the Ukrainian military and ousting the pro-West elected government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy remained out of reach, with Zelenskyy unshaken and lethal Western military aid pouring across the Polish and Romanian borders.
Zelenskyy accused Russia of carrying out genocide after Ukrainian officials said Russian aircraft bombed a children's hospital on Wednesday, burying patients in rubble despite a ceasefire deal for people to flee the besieged city of Mariupol.
The attack, which authorities said injured women in labour and left children in the wreckage, underscored US warnings that the biggest assault on a European state since 1945 could become increasingly attritional after Russia's early failures.
The World Health Organization said Wednesday that it has confirmed 18 attacks on medical facilities since the Russian invasion began two weeks ago.
Ukrainian officials said the attack at a medical complex in Mariupol wounded at least 17 people.
The White House condemned the hospital bombing as a "barbaric use of military force to go after innocent civilians".
Russia had earlier pledged to halt firing so at least some trapped civilians could escape the port city, where hundreds of thousands have been sheltering without water or power for more than a week. Both sides blamed the other for the failure of the evacuation.
"A children’s hospital. A maternity hospital. How did they threaten the Russian Federation?” Zelenskyy asked in his nightly video address, switching to Russian to express horror at the strike.
Zelenskyy repeated his call for the West to tighten sanctions on Russia "so that they sit down at the negotiating table and end this brutal war".
The bombing of the children's hospital, he said, was "proof that a genocide of Ukrainians is taking place".
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked by Reuters for comment, said: "Russian forces do not fire on civilian targets."
Russia calls its incursion a "special operation" to disarm its neighbour and dislodge leaders it calls "neo-Nazis."
Ukraine's foreign ministry posted video footage of what it said was the hospital showing holes where windows should have been in a three-storey building.
Huge piles of smouldering rubble littered the scene.
The UN Human Rights body said it was verifying the number of casualties at Mariupol. The incident "adds to our deep concerns about indiscriminate use of weapons in populated areas," it added through a spokesperson.
Among more than 2 million total refugees from Ukraine, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday that more than 1 million children have fled the country since the invasion started on February 24. At least 37 had been killed and 50 injured, it said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said houses had been destroyed all across Ukraine. "Hundreds of thousands of people have no food, no water, no heat, no electricity and no medical care," it said.
Meanwhile, foreign ministers from Russia and Ukraine will meet in Turkey on Thursday in the first high-level talks between the two countries since Moscow invaded its neighbour, with Ankara hoping they could mark a turning point in the raging conflict.
"I will say frankly that my expectations of the talks are low," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a video statement on Wednesday.
Ukraine is seeking a ceasefire, liberation of its territories and to resolve all humanitarian issues, Kuleba said.
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