By Aditi Sangal, Adrienne Vogt, Meg Wagner, George Ramsay, Jack Guy, Helen Regan, Adam Renton, Melissa Macaya, Jason Kurtz, Aditi Sangal and Amir Vera, CNN
From Tim Lister in Kyiv
Three people died after they were injured in a Russian bomb attack on a maternity hospital in southern Ukraine, Mariupol city council said Thursday
"As of today, we know that after the terrorist bombing by Russian aircraft of the children's hospital in Mariupol there are 17 victims — children, women, doctors — and three died, among them one child, a girl," the council said.
The full extent of the casualties is unclear but preliminary reports said at least 17 people were injured in the bombing.
From CNN’s Joseph Ataman in Paris
French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal has denounced a Russian strike against a maternity and children's hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, as “inhumane” and “unjustifiable.”
“I want to say in the name of the French government that the strike by Russia against Mariupol’s pediatric hospital was inhumane and cowardly. It’s women, children, health care workers who were targeted, it’s unjustifiable,” he said in an interview with French radio station RTL.
Calling again for a ceasefire in Ukraine, Attal predicted the worst is yet to come in the Russian invasion.
From CNN's Tim Lister and Olga Voitovych
The Ukrainian government said it is opening humanitarian corridors in several parts of the country Thursday.
As of 10 a.m. local time it was not clear whether the corridors — designed to allow civilians to escape to safer regions — had been agreed with Russia or international humanitarian agencies.
Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukrainian minister of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories, said on Facebook the corridors would apply to three routes in eastern Ukraine — Sumy to Poltava, Trostianets to Poltava and Krasnopilllia to Poltava.
Another corridor is set to be opened from the eastern city of Izium to the city of Lozova in Kharkiv region. Additionally, she said, the Ukrainians planned to open corridors from the besieged city of Mariupol to Zaporizhzia
Vereshchuk added that a corridor would be opened from districts north of the capital, Kyiv: Bucha, Borodianka, Irpin and Hostomel. Attempts to evacuate people from those districts Wednesday were only partially successful.
From CNN's Tim Lister in Kyiv
Three evacuation corridors are planned to be opened in Ukraine's northeastern Sumy region on Thursday, the head of the regional administration Dmytro Zhyvytsky said on his official Telegram channel.
"Green corridors" allow civilians to escape to safer regions of the country as Russian forces bombard Ukrainian cities.
The proposed evacuation routes were tentatively set to start at 9 a.m. local time (2 a.m. ET) Thursday, he said, with civilians heading to Poltava, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) away in central Ukraine.
Efforts to evacuate civilians from Sumy have been stepped up after at least 21 people were killed Tuesday in a Russian airstrike on the city.
Some context: Nearly 35,000 people were rescued via humanitarian corridors in Ukraine on Wednesday, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Ukrainian authorities were preparing six humanitarian corridors to get people out of areas under attack by Russian forces, he added.
But local authorities in areas close to Kyiv said efforts to evacuate people to safety Wednesday failed. The city council of Bucha said 50 buses were blocked by the Russian military in nearby Stoyanka.
A loud and growing chorus is calling for an international effort to investigate potential war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the Russian bombing of a maternity and children's hospital in the southern city of Mariupol Wednesday a "war crime" and "proof of a genocide of Ukrainians."
"We never did and we would have never done nothing like this anything close to this war crime in any cities of Donetsk or Luhansk region, or any region," he said, referring to two separatist-held territories of eastern Ukraine.
The UN said it would follow up "urgently" and that health care facilities, hospitals and health workers should not "ever, ever be a target."
On Wednesday, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova called for a "new model" of investigative efforts to tackle alleged war crimes in the country, saying a special tribunal should be created for the "unprecedented" crisis. She said 39 countries have joined Ukraine’s appeal to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Russia.
Russia's attack of a nuclear power plant, suspected use of cluster bombs and so-called vacuum bombs in dense areas, and targeting of hospitals, schools and civilian areas have also been described as war crimes.
Last week, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said it would immediately proceed with an active investigation of possible war crimes following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The UN is also establishing a Commission of Inquiry to investigate possible human rights violations by Russia.
What is a war crime? The ICC has specific definitions for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. Targeting civilian populations, violating the Geneva Conventions, targeting specific groups of people and more could be potential Russian war crimes. "One thing is certain, that intentionally directing shelling or targeting civilians or civilian objects is a crime within the jurisdiction of the court," the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, told CNN last week.
What is the ICC? Located in The Hague, Netherlands, and created by a treaty called the Rome Statute first brought before the UN, the ICC operates independently. Some 123 countries are parties to the treaty, but there are very large and notable exceptions, including Russia and the United States. And, for that matter, Ukraine.
Read more about war crimes:
Analysis from CNN's Tim Lister
Two weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, Russia's "precision strikes" have become much less precise and its ground forces arelaboring to seize territory.
On the eve of the offensive, some US officials predicted Kyiv would fall within 48 to 72 hours of hostilities beginning. Yet the blue-and-yellow flag of Ukraine still hangs from its buildings.
If, as Putin asserted, Ukraine was not a real country, it would surely have collapsed by now. But even with 150,000 Russian troops inside its borders, according to US assessments, they control at most about 10% of Ukraine.
On the ground: Serious defenses and countless checkpoints have popped up around Kyiv. Ukrainian forces — to the surprise of many observers — have been nimble and effective against Russian armor that has struggled to make progress.
Small, mobile units that know the territory have cut down Russian convoys. The anti-tank weapons acquired mainly from the US and UK have left smoking hulks on roads across the country. Turkish-made attack drones have been deployed to precise effect.
In the few areas occupied by Russian forces — even those that are predominantly Russian-speaking — crowds of hundreds have hurled abuse at bewildered Russian soldiers. They have built mountains of tires to defend their towns and painted over street signs.
Not that the Ukrainians have the upper hand: They can't defeat a vastly superior Russian force, but the evidence so far suggests that — fortified by weapons and other help flowing across the border from Poland — they may yet deny Putin victory.
Read the full analysis:
From CNN's Simone McCarthy and Beijing Bureau
In public statements and at international summits, Chinese officials have attempted to stake out a seemingly neutral position on the war in Ukraine, neither condemning Russian actions nor ruling out the possibility Beijing could act as a mediator in a push for peace.
But while its international messaging has kept many guessing as to Beijing’s true intentions, much of its domestic media coverage of Russia’s invasion tells a wholly different story.
There, an alternate reality is playing out for China’s 1.4 billion people, one in which the invasion is nothing more than a “special military operation,” according to its national broadcaster CCTV; the United States may be funding a biological weapons program in Ukraine, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is a victim standing up for a beleaguered Russia.
To tell that story, major state-run news media outlets — which dominate China’s highly censored media space — have been largely echoing Russian state media stories or information from Russian officials.
A CNN analysis reviewed nearly 5,000 social media posts from 14 Chinese state media outlets during the first eight days of Russia’s invasion posted onto China’s Twitter-like platform, Weibo. The analysis found that of the more than 300 most-shared posts about the events in Ukraine almost half were what CNN classified as distinctly pro-Russian, often containing information attributed to a Russian official or picked up directly from Russia’s state media.
Read the full story:
From CNN's Jonny Hallam
Disturbing photos show bodies being lowered into a mass grave in the besieged city of Mariupol, southern Ukraine on Wednesday.
The images from the Associated Press show men, some dressed in overalls or blue protective suits, placing bodies into a trench. In some photos, the corpses are in body bags, but others are wrapped only in what appear to be blankets.
The city has been under attack for days, bombarded and isolated by Russian forces.
At least 1,300 civilians have been killed in Mariupol since the Russian invasion began, an adviser to the city's mayor said Wednesday.
Residents have been cut off from water and electricity and on Tuesday Ukraine's Foreign Minister accused Russia of committing war crimes by holding 300,000 civilians “hostage.
"Really, we can't calculate how many deaths we have — I mean three to four times more. We are not even able to count how many people on the streets have been killed by bombing and artillery," Mariupol's deputy mayor, Sergei Orlov told CNN.
"We do not know how many, because we cannot collect all the bodies and we cannot count."
To deal with the sheer number of bodies, city workers dug a deep trench over 75 feet (22 meters) long inside a graveyard and laid to rest the bodies of soldiers and civilians who had been killed during repeated attacks by Russian forces.
Evgeniy Maloletka, a photojournalist with the AP who captured the scene, said some of the bodies are "brought wrapped in carpets or plastic bags." "Forty came Tuesday, another 30 so far Wednesday," he added.
Analysis from CNN's Maeve Reston
Pressure is growing on the Biden administration and its European allies to justify whether they are doing enough to stop the atrocities that are being inflicted on the Ukrainian people as horrific new images emerged Wednesday from the alleged Russian bombing of a maternity and children’s hospital in Mariupol.
The photographs of pregnant women emerging from the bomb-ravaged hospital in blood-stained clothing were the kinds of images certain to stir the consciences of people around the world watching their own leaders try to respond to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s widening campaign, which is increasingly resulting in civilian casualties.
What the democratic nations of the world are willing to do in the face of mounting Ukrainian casualties and millions of refugees fleeing the country is the most unnerving question now facing the US and its allies.
Read the full analysis:
