Russia Targets Relatively Unscathed Part of Western Ukraine

If it falls, it would be one of the few major cities to be taken by the Russians and would give their forces control of the coast along the Sea of Azov. As the fighting intensified, a desperate race continued in the hopes of rescuing any survivors entombed for a third night in the ruins of a theater in Mariupol that was reported to have been sheltering hundreds of people.

Across the country, the Ukrainians say they are pressing to take advantage of the slowed Russian ground offensive on multiple fronts. Ukraine’s Army claimed to have taken back towns and villages around Kherson, one of the first cities to fall to Russian forces, and to the west, the defense of the strategic city of Mykolaiv continued to hold, preventing a Russian advance on Odessa.

But in a severe blow, a Russian rocket attack on a Ukrainian military barracks in Mykolaiv killed more than 40 soldiers, according to a senior Ukrainian military official. And Around Kyiv — the capital and a key target of the Russian offensive — new satellite imagery appeared to show Russian artillery establishing defensive positions, digging in for a long fight.

Here are the latest developments:

• On Friday, President Biden warned China’s leader, Xi Jinping that there would be “implications and consequences” for providing direct military aid to Russia. But Beijing’s readout of the leaders’ call dwelled more on the fate of Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as its own.

• President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia made his first public appearance on Friday since ordering the invasion on Feb. 24. He told a crowd in the country’s largest stadium that Russians “have not had such unity for a long time.”

• Russia may be heading for a recession, according to the governor of the nation’s central bank. Already, the ruble has lost about 30 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar this year.

Yet the Ukrainian forces defending the city have refused to surrender, even as tank battles and street fighting were reported in what remains of the city center.

Video shared by the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov showed soldiers purportedly from the Russian region in the Caucasus in Mariupol. “The Chechen security forces delight us with new cadres of captured Ukronazis,” Mr. Kadyrov said in a caption for the video, using a derogatory term for those who support the Ukrainian Army, whom President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has tried to portray as “Nazis.” The New York Times has not independently verified the video’s contents.

Russia’s wars in Chechnya — where Moscow’s artillery and air forces turned city blocks to rubble and its ground troops massacred civilians in what was many viewed as a deliberate campaign to terrorize the population into submission — have been widely seen as a prelude to the campaign of destruction in Ukraine.

“One by one, the areas are cleared, and soon it will reach you,” Mr. Kadyrov continued, addressing his remarks to Ukrainians inside the city. “Either you voluntarily lay down your arms and accept the punishment you deserve, or we will knock it out of your hands and take punitive measures ourselves.”

Local officials have tallied more than 2,500 deaths in the siege of Mariupol, although the true number can’t be counted because of the relentless shelling.

Roughly 9,000 people have escaped the city in recent days, President Volydymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in an overnight address to the nation. But hundreds of thousands remain trapped with no heat or water in a wasteland of bombed-out buildings where dead bodies dot the streets. The surrounding roads are mined, and the port is blockaded.

It is one of dozens of Ukrainian towns and cities now in ruins, setting off the worst humanitarian catastrophe in Europe since the end of World War II.

The attack on the theater in Mariupol has become emblematic of a war in which civilians have come under withering assault, with scores of schools, hospitals and residential buildings destroyed by Russian bombardments. The theater struck on Wednesday was clearly labeled as a haven for families, with satellite imagery showing the word children spelled out on the ground outside in a way that was visible to any planes flying overhead.

As many as 1,300 people were believed to have been sheltering at the theater from the fighting. Ukrainian officials said on Friday that 130 people had been rescued.

If there are further survivors, time is running out after three nights trapped in the wreckage.

The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration said in a report this month that “over 12 million people are estimated to be stranded in affected areas or unable to leave due to heightened security risks, destruction of bridges and roads, as well as lack of resources or information on where to find safety and accommodation.”

On Friday, the United Nations completed its first convoy of urgent humanitarian aid to one hard-hit city in eastern Ukraine, delivering medical supplies, bottled water, ready-to-eat meals and canned food to help about 35,000 people in Sumy.

“We hope this is the first of many shipments delivered to the people trapped by fighting,” said Amin Awad, the crisis coordinator for the United Nations in Ukraine.

The speed at which the humanitarian crisis has unfolded is without precedent in modern European history, transforming what had been a peaceful nation into a nightmare of destruction and death in a matter of weeks. More than three million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24, and about 6.5 million have been forced from their homes by fighting, according to the I.O.M.

There is no reliable data on the full toll on civilian casualties. The United Nations said on Friday that at least 816 Ukrainian civilians had died since the invasion began, including 59 children — figures that it says are probably a vast underestimate.

Efforts to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people from cities across eastern and southern Ukraine continued to be undermined on Saturday by intense fighting and cease-fire violations.

“More than 9,000 people were evacuated from the besieged Mariupol,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in his overnight address to the nation. “In total, more than 180,000 Ukrainians have been rescued by the humanitarian corridors.”

But that represents just a fraction of the millions still thought to be trapped by fighting and in urgent need of relief or escape. Mr. Zelensky accused Russian forces of deliberately blocking humanitarian aid to besieged cities.

“This is a war crime,” he said. “Every Russian figure who gives such orders and every Russian soldier who carries out such orders will be identified. And will receive a compulsory one-way ticket to The Hague, to the city where the International Criminal Court is located.”

The exact number on civilians killed in the conflict has been hard to assess. The United Nations Human Rights Office has said that as of Thursday, there had been 2,149 civilian casualties since the war began, including 816 killed, 59 of them children, mostly by explosive weapons.

The real toll is most likely much higher, with information scarce from some of the cities under siege. Hundreds of people were believed to be trapped in the wreckage of a Mariupol theater destroyed in a Russian attack. The word “children” had been spelled out in white lettering on the pavement outside the theater, where they had been sheltering, but it was still targeted.

The display of empty strollers was the latest coordinated effort by Ukrainians seeking support from citizens around the world through social media campaigns in their fight against Russia’s invasion. Through videos, hashtags and memes, they have highlighted the human suffering from the war, showcased Ukrainians’ perseverance and spotlighted the cruelty inflicted by Russia’s attacks.

The #closethesky hashtag is a reference to Ukraine’s request for a no-fly zone over the country, something Western leaders have adamantly refused to impose because enforcing such a zone could pull NATO nations into a global conflict with Russia.

The appearance of empty strollers in the square came on the same day that Russian missiles for the first time struck near Lviv, about 50 miles from the border with Poland, shattering the relative peace in the city where Ukrainians fleeing violence had been seeking refuge.

The attack destroyed several buildings near the city’s airport that had been used to repair aircraft.

“A big rally took place,” he said, “and I want to pay attention to one detail. It is reported that a total of about 200,000 people were involved in the rally in the Russian capital: 100,000 on the streets, about 95,000 at the stadium. Approximately the same number of Russian troops were involved in the invasion of Ukraine.”

Mr. Zelensky went on to talk about the Russian soldiers killed in the war. The Ukrainian Army estimates that 14,000 have died; the Pentagon says the figure is probably about half that. But there is broad agreement among independent observers that Russia has suffered heavy losses that the Kremlin is hiding from the public.

Conveying that to the Russian people has been a key part of the Ukrainian war effort, in the hope that domestic pressure might force Mr. Putin to change course.

“Just imagine, 14,000 corpses and tens of thousands of wounded and maimed people at that stadium in Moscow,” Mr. Zelensky said. “There are already so many Russian losses as a result of this invasion. This is the price of war. In a little more than three weeks. The war must end.”

He called for a renewed push for a diplomatic solution to end the bloodshed.

“I want everyone to hear me now, especially in Moscow,” he said. “It’s time to meet, time to talk. It is time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be so huge that several generations will not be enough to rebound.”

“We have to end this stupid war,” Mr. Duterte said, according to a transcript released by his office on Friday. “There’s violence in Europe, and Russia has wreaked havoc there,” he added.

But he said: “We better maintain our neutrality. Let’s avoid meddling in it.”

Mr. Duterte is known for making outlandish or contradictory statements and for reversing himself. Throughout his presidency, which began in 2016, he has sought to distance the Philippines from the United States, its primary defense ally for decades, by vowing to pursue closer ties to China and Russia.

Earlier this month, the Philippines was one of 141 nations that supported a resolution by the U.N. General Assembly that condemned Russia’s invasion.

Still, the country is one of several across Asia that have been reluctant to take a strong stand against Russian aggression, at least compared with the response from American allies like Japan and South Korea, which have imposed various sanctions on Russia.

This week, Mr. Duterte said that Mr. Putin is “a personal friend” and that he planned to skip President Biden’s scheduled meeting with Southeast Asian leaders on March 28.

He also said he would not commit forces to the war effort even if the United States — which has had a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines — were drawn into the conflict.

“For as long as I’m president, I won’t send a single soldier of mine to go to war,” Mr. Duterte said. “That is not our fight.”

When Russia blocked Facebook and limited Twitter this month, many Chinese internet users were surprised. Wait a moment, they said: The Russians could use Facebook and Twitter? Both social media platforms have been banned in China since 2009.

By blocking online platforms, shutting down the last vestige of Russia’s independent media and making it a crime to refer to the fighting in Ukraine as a war, the Kremlin has made it nearly impossible for the Russian people to get independent or international news after its invasion. Most Russians are taking in an alternative reality.

That’s exactly what China has been doing to its 1.4 billion people for years. Nearly all major Western websites are blocked in the country. A generation of Chinese have grown up in a very different information environment from the rest of the world. Mostly, they are left to believe in what Beijing tells them.

“When people ask me how info environment within the Great Firewall is like,” Yaqiu Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in New York, wrote on Twitter about China’s censored internet, “I say, ‘imagine the whole country is one giant QAnon.’”

Mr. Xi, according to a statement issued on Saturday, warned Mr. Biden that “some people in the United States” had sent the “wrong signal” by supporting independence for Taiwan. It was not clear if he meant officials in the Biden administration, members of Congress — or both.

“Mishandling of the Taiwan question will have a disruptive impact on bilateral ties,” the statement said, paraphrasing Mr. Xi’s remarks.

Mr. Xi’s comments on Taiwan were not new, but they underscored how China viewed the war in Ukraine through the lens of its own conflict with Taiwan, which has remained outside the political control of Beijing since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

China has sought to distance itself from the conflict in Ukraine while steadfastly signaling support for Russia. Its actions have also lent support to the grievances of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, as Chinese officials have helped spread a discredited theory that the Pentagon was financing biological weapons labs in Ukraine.

Mr. Xi told Mr. Biden that the United States and NATO should “address the crux of the Ukraine crisis and ease the security concerns of both Russia and Ukraine,” according to the Chinese readout.

He used an aphorism meaning those responsible for a problem must resolve them: “He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off,” he was reported to have told Mr. Biden, suggesting as other officials have, that the United States bore blame for the conflict.