While the Kremlin has defined the last few weeks of relentless bombing on major cities, including Mariupol, and the advance on the capital city of Kyiv as the first phase of the war, there is speculation that Moscow’s forces have been largely stalled due to resistance offered in the conflict-torn country, prompting the declaration of new goals.
President Joe Biden, fresh from a series of Western summits in Brussels, paid a visit to elite US troops serving with NATO just across the border in Poland.
According to Kyiv, approximately 300 people were killed in Russia’s March 16 attack on an iconic theatre in the port city of Mariupol. More than 1,300 people had taken refuge in the theatre as the port city had been shelled mercilessly in recent weeks. The March 16 strike was one of the deadliest in Ukraine in a month of war.
Russia signalled Friday that it may shift its war strategy to focus on eastern Ukraine after failing to break the nation’s resistance in a month of fighting and attacks on civilians, including a bombing of a crowded theatre in which up to 300 people died, according to officials.
