There was no immediate word on deaths or injuries in what the Mariupol city council said was an airstrike on the theater. Satellite imagery from Monday showed the word “children” written in large white letters in Russian in front of and behind the building, the Maxar space technology company said.
U.S. President Joe Biden announced the U.S. is sending an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, including more anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons and drones. He also called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” in his sharpest condemnation of the Russian leader since the invasion began. Hopes for diplomatic progress to end the war rose after Zelenskyy acknowledged Tuesday in the most explicit terms yet that Ukraine is unlikely to realize its goal of joining NATO. Putin has long depicted Ukraine's NATO aspirations as a threat to Russia.
Prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough were highly uncertain, however, given the gulf between Ukraine's demand that the invading forces withdraw completely and Russia's suspected aim of replacing Kyiv's Westward-looking government with a pro-Moscow regime. In going before Congress, Zelenskyy said that Russia “has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people.” But Biden has rejected Zelenskyy's requests to send warplanes to Ukraine or establish a no-fly zone over the country because of the risk of triggering war between the U.S. and Russia.
Local authorities said Russian forces took hundreds of people hostage at a Mariupol hospital and were using them as human shields.