Russian forces surround Kyiv and close the roads leading to Mariupol

Russian forces intensified pressure on Kyiv on Saturday and bombed civilian sites in other cities, including Mariupol, whose thousands of residents live in harsh conditions in southern Ukraine.

In the coastal city of Mykolaiv (south), the bombings did not stop at night, and especially hit a cancer care center and an eye hospital, according to an AFP correspondent.

"They fired at these civilian areas without any military target in them," said Dmytro Laguchev, head of the ophthalmology hospital.

On Saturday morning, local media reported that sirens sounded all over Ukraine, including in the major cities of Kyiv, Odessa, Dnipro and Kharkiv.

In Vasylkiv, Russian bombing destroyed the airport on Saturday morning, 40 kilometers south of Kyiv, while an oil depot was also set ablaze, according to local authorities.

The non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders said that the strategic coastal city of Mariupol, which has been besieged for nearly 12 days under bombardment, is now in an "almost hopeless" situation.

It added that "hundreds of thousands of people" were deprived of water and heating.

"The enemy is still closing Mariupol," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, adding that "Russian forces have not allowed our aid to enter the city."

He promised to make a new attempt on Saturday to deliver food, water and medicine.

For his part, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba confirmed Friday in a tweet attached to a picture of a crater that "the besieged Mariupol is currently the worst humanitarian disaster on the planet. 1,582 civilians were killed in 12 days and buried in mass pits like this."

In addition to Mariupol, the Russians are focusing their efforts on the cities of Kryvyi Rig, Kremenchug, Nikopol and Zaporizhia, according to the Ukrainian army.

But their main goal remains Kyiv, which they are trying to encircle.

And the Ukrainian General Staff announced that the Russian forces present in the outskirts of the capital are trying to eliminate the defenses in several towns north of the capital to tighten the cordon around them.

"Kyiv is a symbol of resistance," President Zelensky's advisor, Mikhailo Podolyak, declared in a video recording.

For its part, the Russian army spoke of progress on the front of the separatist region of Donbass in the east, stressing that it had destroyed "a total of 3,491 Ukrainian military infrastructure", including "123 unmanned aerial vehicles and 1,127 tanks and other combat armored vehicles."

As for the Ukrainian General Staff, it confirmed on Facebook that Russia has lost more than 12,000 soldiers and 1,205 armored vehicles since the invasion began on February 24.

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