Russia bombs school housing 400 refugees

Russian forces have bombed an art school in the besieged city of Mariupol where some 400 people, including women and children, had been sheltering, said Ukrainian authorities.

Mariupol has been one of the main targets of Moscow's attacks. Russian shelling has hammered the eastern Ukrainian port for days, and the city has seen a near total communication blackout. The school, which is located in the east of the city, had been destroyed, the council said in a statement. "Peaceful civilians are still under the rubble," the city council said.

Russia today said it had again fired its newest hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, destroying a fuel storage site in the country's south. "Kinzhal aviation missile systems with hypersonic ballistic missiles destroyed a large storage site for fuels and lubricants of the Ukrainian armed forces near the settlement of Kostyantynivka in the Mykolaiv region," the Russian defence ministry said.

The Ukrainian parliament said that 115 Ukrainian children have been killed since the start of the Russian invasion.

"115 children fell victim to the war unleashed by Russia and Putin. More than 140 young Ukrainians were injured. These numbers are not figures but the scale of grief and the broken destinies of hundreds of Ukrainian families," the Parliament said on its Twitter account.

Turkey, which is trying hard to bring Moscow and Kiev to the negotiating table in an effort to end the ongoing war, has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is still not willing to meet his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.

Speaking to local media outlets, Ibrahim Kalin, a government spokesman in Ankara, said that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has proposed a meeting between the leaders of the two warring nations in Turkey in an effort to end the ongoing war, reports Ukrayinska Pravda.

The US has officially confirmed that Russia used 'Dagger' nuclear-capable hypersonic aeroballistic air-to-ground missile during the hostilities in Ukraine, CNN reported.

The Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, also known as 'Dagger', has a claimed range of more than 2,000 km, Mach 10 speed, and an ability to perform evasive manoeuvers at every stage of its flight.

It can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads and can be launched from Tu-22M3 bombers or MIG 31 K interceptors.

Authorities in Mariupol have claimed that Russian forces were forcing civilians of the besieged Ukrainian city to evacuate to Russia, while some were also being asked to move to remote areas.

The Mariupol City Council said the Russian forces took residents of the Left Bank district, as well as citizens, mostly women and children, who were hiding in a shelter under the building of a sports club, Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

Units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine withdrew from the sports club and nearby residential buildings in an effort to stop the Russians from attacking these areas of concentrated population.

"Russian troops took advantage of this and captured the residents," the City Council added.