Sawt Falasteen - Ukraine warns of new 'Wall' in Europe as theatre hit

Kyiv emerged from a 35-hour curfew to new destruction, as Russian troops try to encircle the Ukrainian capital as part of their slow-moving offensive.

Beneath a Kyiv apartment block damaged by a downed rocket, AFP journalists saw a distraught man crouched over a body draped in a bloodstained cloth, after the latest in a series of early-morning attacks.

President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the German parliament a day after a speech to the US Congress, when he secured $1 billion in new US military aid, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles used against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

Zelensky reached back to that Cold War era as he drew on a 1987 speech in Berlin by US president Ronald Reagan: "Dear Mr Scholz, tear down this Wall," he implored German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

"It's not a Berlin Wall -- it is a Wall in central Europe between freedom and bondage and this Wall is growing bigger with every bomb."

In an overnight video message, Zelensky also urged Russians to lay down their arms, three weeks into an invasion that has drawn swingeing Western sanctions against President Vladimir Putin's regime.

"If your war, the war against the Ukrainian people, continues, Russia's mothers will lose more children than in the Afghan and Chechen wars combined," he said, referencing the thousands lost in those conflicts.

- Putin lashes 'traitors' -

US President Joe Biden called Putin a "war criminal", triggering fury in the Kremlin, as the Russian leader also lashed out at "scum and traitors" at home who he said were undermining the war effort.

Russia's defence ministry denied it had targeted the Drama Theatre in the besieged port city of Mariupol, where local officials say more than 2,000 people have died so far in indiscriminate Chechnya-style shelling.

The ministry said the building had been mined and blown up by members of Ukraine's far-right Azov Battalion, a claim dismissed in the West as Russian disinformation.

Ukrainian officials said more than 1,000 civilians had been sheltering in the theatre. Human Rights Watch said it was at least 500.

Zelensky said the "number of dead is not yet known" but the airborne attack showed "Russia has become a terrorist state".

Ukrainian lawmaker Sergyi Taruta said rubble was being cleared and some survivors emerging from a bomb shelter beneath the theatre, without giving more detail, and officials said Russian shelling had continued.

Satellite images of the theatre on March 14 shared by private satellite company Maxar showed the words "children" clearly etched out in the ground in Russian on either side of the building.

Officials posted a photo of the building, its middle part completely destroyed and thick white smoke rising from the rubble.

"The only word to describe what has happened today is genocide, genocide of our nation, our Ukrainian people," Mariupol mayor Vadim Boychenko said.

-'War crimes' -

Addressing the Bundestag by video, Zelensky issued a strong rebuke of Germany's years-long reluctance to sever energy and business ties with Russia.

"We turned to you," he said. "We told you that Nord Stream (gas pipelines) was a kind of preparation for the war.

"And the answer we got was purely economic -- it is economy, economy, economy but that was the mortar for the new Wall."

The broader economic consequences from the war could cut global growth by "over one percentage point" and drive up inflation in the next 12 months, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said.

However, NATO members have resisted Zelensky's pleas for direct involvement through a no-fly zone over Ukraine, warning it could lead to World War III against nuclear-armed Russia.

Britain's diplomatic mission to the UN tweeted that Russia was committing "war crimes and targeting civilians" in Ukraine, after the UK and allies requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting.

But the Kremlin rejected an order by the top UN court to halt its offensive.

Putin, at a televised government meeting Wednesday, insisted the invasion was "developing successfully", adding, "We will not allow Ukraine to serve as a springboard for aggressive actions against Russia."

He also condemned the Western sanctions as "economic blitzkrieg", after Russia was frozen out of much of the Western financial system.

However, the Russian finance ministry said Thursday it had carried out interest payments worth $117.2 million on two foreign bonds, avoiding a default for now.

- From rackets to rifles -

The World Health Organization said healthcare facilities and personnel were being attacked in Ukraine at an unprecedented rate, and its health system was "teetering on the brink".

More than three million Ukrainians have fled across the border, mostly women and children, according to the UN. Ukraine's prosecution service said 108 children had been killed in the war.

With stop-start peace talks ongoing, officials in Kyiv said Russia had agreed to nine humanitarian corridors Thursday for fleeing refugees, including one out of Mariupol.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said a "compromise" outcome in the talks would centre on Ukraine becoming a neutral state comparable to Sweden and Austria -- an idea roundly rejected by Kyiv.

Ukraine wants an immediate ceasefire, Russia to withdraw and the West to guarantee its security -- proposals that are equally anathema to Moscow.

"Our delegation is ready to work day and night," Peskov said Thursday. "Unfortunately we do not see the same zeal on the Ukrainian side."

Many Ukrainians are zealous about defending their homeland.

His wife was distraught at the decision, Stakhovsky told AFP as he patrolled the city in khaki camouflage, toting a Kalashnikov. But, he said, "I knew I had to go there."

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Y.AlMasri--SF-PST