Since it’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine February 22, it is estimated that up to two thousand civilians have been killed, and thousands more wounded, creating a refugee crises also numbering in the thousands.
On Wednesday, a Russian airstrike struck a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol, Ukraine. According to AP News, the strike took out most of the building’s front, wounding at least seventeen people, and killing three, including a six year old child.
Volodymir Nikulin, top regional police official called the attack a war crime. “Today Russia committed a huge crime,” he said. “It is a war crime without any justification.”
In the city of Zhytomyr, two other hospitals were bombed, one of them a children’s hospital. According to Mayor, Serhii Sukholmlyn, no one was wounded.
“A children’s hospital!” Volodymir Zelensky said indignantly. “A maternity hospital. How did they threaten the Russian Federation? What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?”
He called on the U.S. to tighten sanctions.
“There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenseless,” Britain’s Prime Minister, Boris Johnson tweeted, calling for Putin to be held to account for his crimes.
According to the State Department, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken condemned the attacks during a phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba.
The longer the war continued, the Biden administration has feared the use of chemical or biological weapons against Ukraine, denying Russian claims that Ukraine is developing illegal chemical weapons.
It has been claimed by Russia, that the hospitals it has bombed are fake news, and amounted to “information terrorism,” according to U.S. News. “This is information terrorism,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharov said. Despite previous claims that the building was a front for radical militias.
Sources: AP News, the Independent, the Week.
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