Russian military police round up 400 activists in Kherson ‘and take them hostage’ after ‘firing gunshots in the air and hitting demonstrators’ when they protested Moscow’s invasion
- Russian police have rounded up 400 Ukrainians who protested against invasion
- Demonstrators arrested during a rally in their hometown Kherson, south Ukraine
- Kherson is the only Ukrainian city under Russian control after capture last week
- Latest in Vladimir Putin’s efforts to extend arm of his police state over the border
- Click here for MailOnline’s liveblog with the latest updates on the Ukraine crisis
Ukrainian commanders said on Wednesday that Russian military police had rounded up 400 activists and allegedly taken them hostage after they were caught protesting Moscow’s invasion.
Russian soldiers hit at least one of the protesters and fired gunshots into the air while arresting the Kherson residents, according to former Ukrainian Finance Minister Tymofiy Mylovanov.
Footage posted on social media on March 5 shows residents of the city protesting over the Russian occupation.
Demonstrators were arrested for rallying against the occupation of their hometown Kherson, in the south of Ukraine, – the only city under Russian control.
The city was captured by Vladimir Putin’s men overnight on March 1, five days after Moscow ordered its troops to invade Ukraine.
It is the latest effort by Russia’s President Putin to extend the hand of his police state across the border to grab activists on foreign soil.
Ukrainian commanders said on Wednesday that Russian military police had rounded up 400 activists who were protesting against the invasion. Footage posted on social media on March 5 shows residents of the city protesting over the Russian occupation
‘Due to the furious resistance of the residents of Kherson, the occupiers are attempting to introduce an administrative-police regime,’ Ukraine’s military high command said in a statement
A local man, who asked to be referred to as James, told PA, that despite Russian forces being in control in the city, James is sceptical about their ability to maintain a strong presence in the country.
He described the invasion as a ‘farce’, adding: ‘There’s no invasion – the Russian forces are just moving alongside of our highways, it’s just a very long line of Russian military vehicles that move from town to town on the roads.
‘They are not capable to take over towns and set up their own administrations in them – they don’t have enough resources for that. The Russian forces are not endless.
‘At some point, Ukrainians will push them out – and we hope for that moment to be sooner than later.’
It comes as shortages of medicine and food in the occupied city have left vulnerable people waiting to die, according to James.
While shops in the city remain open, supplies are not getting through. He said: ‘What we have now is a catastrophe in terms of medicine delivery. People who struggle for life without medicine – that is the state of emergency right now.’
Asked what such people are doing, he said: ‘I think they just wait to die, that’s what they’re doing.’
James said there were also concerns about food shortages, and there had been no indications from the Russians when supplies might be allowed into the city.
He said: ‘If some kind of delivery heads to Kherson it has to be guarded and from what I see the Russians are acting with hatred and they just kill for fun.
‘This is not what I hear, this is what I see on the pictures – they just shoot at the cars.
‘We in Kherson live like in a big aquarium where at any time they could just spoil the water or pump it away.’
Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022
A woman injured in Russian shelling of Mariupol’s maternity hospital stands outside wrapped in a blanket amid the carnage
A Russian attack severely damaged the children’s hospital and maternity ward in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter that there were ‘people, children under the wreckage’ of the hospital and called the strike an ‘atrocity.’
A maternity hospital in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol has suffered ‘colossal’ damage after a ‘direct hit’ by Russian rocket artillery that left children buried in the rubble (pictured, a badly damaged room at the hospital)
Ukraine has rejected most Russian evacuation routes because they lead to Russian soil or that of its ally, Belarus, while routes that Ukraine has proposed have come under bombardment. The only successful evacuation to take place so far has been from Sumy to Poltava (in green)
Battles broke out around the city of Mykolaiv, in the south, as Russians attempted to push out from Kherson towards Odessa, but were turned back, on Wednesday.
Fighting is also going on close to the city of Sumy in an attempt to surround Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, commanders said.
Meanwhile on Wednesday a maternity hospital in Mariupol was decimated in a ‘direct hit’ by Russian rockets leaving children buried in the rubble, President Zelensky has said, in what he described as an ‘atrocity.’
Footage has emerged of badly wounded patients and nurses being evacuated from decimated buildings, while pregnant women were carried out on stretchers into a courtyard covered in rubble and littered with huge craters.
Zelensky himself posted a video showing the badly damaged hospital buildings, filmed inside a destroyed ward room with its windows blown out and ceiling partially collapsed. More footage showed a car park covered in rubble and the smouldering wrecks of vehicles as injured families staggered into the freezing air while snow fell.
‘Direct strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital. People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity,’ the President tweeted.
Meanwhile at least 10 people were killed in a Russian military attack in the eastern Ukrainian town of Severodonestk on Tuesday, a local official for the Luhansk region said in a statement on Telegram.
The Russian military ‘opened fire’ on residential homes and other buildings in the town, he said, without immediately specifying whether it was an artillery attack. The region has seen heavy fighting in recent days.
Russia’s defence ministry meanwhile acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that some conscripts had been sent to fight on the frontlines in Ukraine, just days after Putin promised that only professional soldiers would be sent in.
Some associations of soldiers’ mothers in Russia had raised concerns about a number of conscripts going incommunicado at the start of what Kremlin calls a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, suggesting they could have been sent to fight despite a lack of adequate training.
The revelation comes just one week after Russia’s parliament passed a law imposing a prison term of up to 15 years for spreading intentionally ‘fake’ news about the military.
‘Unfortunately, we have discovered several facts of the presence of conscripts in units taking part in the special military operation in Ukraine. Practically all such soldiers have been pulled out to Russia,’ the defence ministry said, promising to prevent such situations in the future.
New members of the Territorial Defence Forces train to operate RPG-7 anti-tank launcher during military exercises in Kyiv
Ukrainian servicemen evacuate a person across Irpin River below a destroyed bridge as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues
A baby is evacuated as people flee near a destroyed bridge to cross the Irpin River, on the outskirts of Kyiv, as Russian forces try to surround it in ahead of an attack
A Ukrainian soldier examines a huge crater caused by one of the Russian rockets, which fell just in front of a hospital building at the maternity hospital in Mariupol
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