Russian forces bearing down on Ukraine renewed their ground offensive and widened their aerial bombardment ahead of a United Nations Security Council meeting on Friday called by Moscow to discuss unfounded claims of U.S.-backed chemical and biological weapons labs in Ukraine.
The labs in question have been characterized by the U.S. State Department as “Ukrainian diagnostic and biodefense laboratories,” with U.S. diplomatic and intelligence officials calling accusations that they are weapons labs a “false flag.”
“This is exactly the kind of ‘false flag’ effort we have warned Russia might initiate to justify a biological or chemical weapons attack,” Olivia Dalton, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Mission to the U.N. said late Thursday. “We’re not going to let Russia gaslight the world or use the U.N. Security Council as a venue for promoting their disinformation.”
President Joe Biden announced on Friday that the United States will join the G-7 and the European Union in calling for the suspension of normal trade relations with Russia, which will likely raise tariffs for many Russian products.
RUSSIA REQUESTS EMERGENCY UN SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING TO PRESENT ‘EVIDENCE’ OF UKRAINE BIOLABS
His announcement comes as Vice President Kamala Harris met with President Klaus Iohannis of Romania. Iohannis said the allies would defend “every inch” of NATO territory.
Harris said she was there to reaffirm America’s commitment “to the NATO alliance as a whole” and detailed the resources the U.S. has sent to help NATO forces in Eastern Europe.
In Ukraine, satellite images taken by U.S.-based Maxar Technologies showed a Russian military convoy near the capital city of Kyiv had “largely dispersed and redeployed.” The convoy was last seen near Antonov Airport, northwest of Kyiv, and its movement suggests that Russia is repositioning its forces for a renewed assault there.
Ukraine on Friday accused Moscow’s military of hitting a psychiatric hospital near the eastern town of Izyum, with the regional governor calling it “a brutal attack on civilians.”
While the primary focus for Russian forces has been capturing the capital city of Kyiv, missile strikes were reported overnight in three new places.
The first was in Dnipro, a strategic city on the Dnieper River. Air raid sirens wailed for more than three hours, and the airstrikes hit a small shoe factory, an apartment block, and a kindergarten, the BBC reported. If Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces are able to take Dnipro, they could lay claim to the eastern half of Ukraine.
In the northwest, strikes were also reported in Lutsk.
“Three missiles hit our military airfield,” Lutsk Mayor Ihor Polishchuk said on Facebook, adding that two soldiers were killed and six more were injured. He said the city’s missile alert system failed to go off.
The alert system also failed in the southwestern city of Ivano-Frankivsk.
“On the morning of March 11, long-range high-precision weapons struck the military infrastructure of Ukraine,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said. “Military airfields in Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk have been shut down.”
By going after cities in western Ukraine, Russia is attempting to slow the flow of weapons and resources Western nations have been desperately trying to get into Ukrainian hands since the invasion began 15 days ago.
The renewed Russian push and targeting of civilians have taken a grim turn, with hundreds of thousands of people across the country plunged into poverty with no running water, heat, or electricity. Many places have had to ration food, and in others, there has been little to no medical care for those wounded.
The number of Ukrainian refugees has grown to 2.5 million, the U.N. reported late Thursday. The majority, roughly 1.5 million people, have gone to Poland.
In the port city of Mariupol, the situation is catastrophic as the number of the dead grows daily. The trickle of information that had been coming out of Mariupol is now at a standstill after a missile strike on the city’s emergency services center cut one of the last lines of communication to the outside world.
Mariupol’s maternity hospital is one of 26 hospitals and healthcare facilities that have come under attack from Russian forces, the U.N. said on Friday, contradicting claims from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who said armed extremists were using it as a base.
A representative for the World Health Organization said the attacks on medical buildings have killed 12 people and injured 34.
Ukraine’s defense and intelligence ministries claimed Friday that Putin “ordered the preparation of a terrorist attack” at the defunct Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the New York Times reported.
The media outlet could not confirm the claim and pointed to Ukrainian officials issuing “other stark warnings about nuclear sites, while outside experts have been more measured.”
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Earlier this week, Ukraine warned of “imminent dangers” posed by the loss of electricity at Chernobyl, while independent experts said they saw no immediate danger. Chernobyl has been under the control of Russian forces since the beginning of the war. In a statement on Friday, the Ukrainian ministries said they now believed Russian saboteurs had entered the plant posing as electrical repair workers.
