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Russia Broadens Offensive on Ukraine with Strikes Near Polish Border 

HeadlineMar 18, 2022

Russia has widened its assault on Ukraine, more than three weeks after President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade. On Friday morning, Russian missiles struck an aircraft repair plant near the civilian airport in Lviv. The attack in western Ukraine came just 50 miles from the border with Poland — a NATO member.

Russian artillery fell on a secondary school and a city cultural center in a town near Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv. That attack killed 23 people. Russian shells also triggered a massive fire in Kharkiv that destroyed one of the largest markets in Eastern Europe, killing three people. More strikes have hit the capital Kyiv.

In southern Ukraine, Russian ships are shelling the Black Sea port city of Odessa. In Mariupol, officials say 30,000 residents have managed to escape, but more than 350,000 remained besieged without adequate food, water or medicine. This is Nadezdha, a Mariupol retiree who survived a Russian strike on her apartment block.

Nadezhda: “My grandson went outside. All of us went to the street, and I was left as the last one. And then there was an explosion. We were left without anything. We are living in basements. It’s a horror. What for? Tell me. What for? What are we guilty of? In whose eyes are we guilty?”

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