Outrage over attack on Ukrainian hospital as talks stall

A Russian airstrike on a Mariupol maternity hospital that killed three people on Thursday is drawing outrage, with Ukrainian and Western officials branding it a war crime, while the talks between Kyiv and Moscow are yet to produce any solution.

Of the three casualties, one was a child, AP reports quoting Ukrainian officials. In addition to the dead, 17 people were wounded, including women waiting to give birth, doctors, and children buried in the rubble.

Images of pregnant women covered in dust and blood dominated news reports in many countries and brought a new wave of horror over the 2-week-old war sparked by Russia's invasion, which has killed thousands of soldiers and civilians and driven more than 2 million people from Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Russian leaders that the invasion will backfire on them as their economy is strangled. Western sanctions have already dealt a severe blow to the economy, causing the ruble to plunge, foreign businesses to flee and prices to rise sharply.

"You will definitely be prosecuted for complicity in war crimes," he said in a video address. "And then, it will definitely happen, you will be hated by Russian citizens — everyone whom you have been deceiving constantly, daily, for many years in a row, when they feel the consequences of your lies in their wallets, in their shrinking possibilities, in the stolen future of Russian children."

Millions more have been displaced inside the country. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Thursday that about 2 million people — half the population of the capital's metropolitan area — have left the city, which has become virtually a fortress.

Bombs fell on two hospitals in a city west of Kyiv on Wednesday, its mayor said. The World Health Organization said it has confirmed 18 attacks on medical facilities since the invasion began.

Western officials said Russian forces have made little progress on the ground in recent days. But they have intensified the bombardment of Mariupol and other cities, trapping hundreds of thousands of people, with food and water running short.

Temporary cease-fires to allow evacuations and humanitarian aid have repeatedly faltered, with Ukraine accusing Russia of continuing its bombardments. 

No progress on ceasefire in Lavrov-Kuleba meeting

Talks between Russia and Ukraine' s foreign ministers on Thursday made no apparent progress towards a ceasefire in the two-week-old conflict or on a humanitarian corridor from the southern Ukrainian port of Mariupol, reports Reuters.

Ukraine's Dmytro Kuleba said after the talks that he had sought a 24-hour ceasefire across the whole combat zone as well as the opening of a Mariupol corridor, but that his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov did not commit to either.

Lavrov said he reminded Kuleba that Moscow had presented proposals to Kyiv, and that Russia wanted to see what he called a friendly, demilitarised Ukraine.

The meeting, in the southern Turkish resort of Antalya, was the highest-level contact between the two sides since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. It lasted just under an hour and a half.

Both Kuleba and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who hosted the talks, said it was not an easy meeting.