Wednesday’s attack on the children’s and maternity hospital there killed three, including a 6-year-old, Orlov told the BBC Thursday morning. Officials said 17 people were injured. It was the third hospital destroyed in the city in the last five days, Orlov said.
Zelenskyy accused Russia of committing a “war crime” and “genocide” after the incident.
Russia has consistently denied targeting civilians. NBC News has not verified the numbers of people killed.
In an impassioned speech posted on Telegram Wednesday night, the Ukrainian president again called on the West to enact a no-fly zone, something the U.S. and NATO have rejected, fearing it could escalate the conflict into a broader war on the continent.
Civilians have increasingly come under fire from Russian airstrikes, with hospitals, schools, residential buildings and vital infrastructure destroyed. More than 2 million people have fled for neighboring countries and countless others have been displaced inside Ukraine.
In the northeastern city of Sumy, where evacuations took place earlier this week and fresh efforts were planned for Thursday, the regional governor said Russian aircraft bombed residential neighborhoods and struck a gas pipeline.
Talks in Turkey
Amid the increasing devastation on the ground in Ukraine, the country’s foreign minister met with his Russian counterpart in Antalya, Turkey on Thursday in the highest-level talks between the two sides since the war began.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said his expectations for the talks were low and urged Russia’s Sergey Lavrov to approach the talks “in good faith, not from a propagandistic perspective.”
“We are interested in a cease-fire, liberating our territories and the third point is to resolve all humanitarian issues,” Kuleba said in a video statement on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, was also invited to Antalya by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu to address the safety and security issues around Ukraine’s nuclear facilities.
Two of Ukraine’s nuclear sites — Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhya — are now under the control of Russian forces. The decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant lost its connection to the power grid, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday, raising fears about the spent radioactive fuel that is stored at the site and must be kept cool.
Ukraine’s nuclear power operator raised fresh concern Thursday over the situation at the plants, saying its workers were “under the barrels of machine guns.” In addition, the IAEA has said that it no longer receives remote data transmission from its monitoring systems at the two sites.
With Russia’s offensive seemingly stalled in the face of stiff Ukrainian resistance, U.S. officials said they were concerned that Moscow could be preparing to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine after the Russian Defense Ministry accused its neighbor of possibly planning a false-flag chemical weapon attack.
Igor Konashenkov, the spokesman for the ministry, said the point of the provocation was to blame Russia for the use of chemical weapons.
“To be clear: this is preposterous,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki in a statement, referring to Russia’s claims.
“We should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false-flag operation using them. It’s a clear pattern, and no one should fall for it,” she added.
Crippling sanctions by the U.S. and its allies have left Russia increasingly isolated and Moscow has warned against the West’s involvement in its conflict with Ukraine.
“There is an unprecedented economic war against Russia,” Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said Thursday.
Moscow’s stock exchange was closed for the tenth consecutive day, while the Russian Ruble fell sharply after the Bank of Russia allowed trading on Wednesday, falling to almost half of its value against the U.S. Dollar since February 10, CNBC reported.
Mariia Ulianovska, Reuters and Carol E. Lee contributed.
