War in Ukraine: What we know on day 25 of Russian invasion

Russia bombs art school in Mariupol where 400 civilians were sheltering, say officials

Internally displaced people make their way on foot to the Moldova Palanca border crossing in Odesa Oblast, Ukraine, on Thursday, March 17th, 2022. Photograph: Jonathan Alpeyrie/Bloomberg
Internally displaced people make their way on foot to the Moldova Palanca border crossing in Odesa Oblast, Ukraine, on Thursday, March 17th, 2022. Photograph: Jonathan Alpeyrie/Bloomberg

Mariupol's city council says Russia bombed an art school where 400 civilians including children were sheltering.

More than 6,600 Ukrainians were evacuated from besieged cities through eight humanitarian corridors on Saturday, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said.

Mr Zelenskiy said Russia’s siege of Mariupol was “a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come”, and would “go down in history of responsibility for war crimes”.

Thousands of residents of Mariupol have been taken to Russia against their will, where they have been “redirected” to remote cities in the country, according to the Mariupol city council.

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Russian troops reportedly stopped a convoy of buses travelling to Mariupol to evacuate residents.

The UK ministry of defence said Russia had still failed to gain control of the skies over Ukraine, and was likely to continue to use heavy firepower - and inflict more civilian casualties - "as it looks to limit its own already considerable losses".

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said his country was “on the right side of history” as it continued to rail against sanctions imposed on Russia and denied it was considering supplying weapons to Moscow.

Australia banned the sale of alumina and aluminium ores to Russia, in an effort to limit Russia's munitions production. Australian supplies 20 per cent of Russia's alumina.

Poland had proposed that the EU implement a total ban on trade with Russia, the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said.

Russia said it had used hypersonic weapons, which travel fast enough to evade detection by missile defence systems, to destroy an underground military depot in western Ukraine. – Guardian