Ukraine: Art School Housing 400 Refugees Bombed in Mariupol

Russian forces have bombed an art school in the besieged Ukraine's port city of Mariupol, where about 400 residents had taken shelter, the city council said on Sunday.

There was no immediate word of casualties from the Saturday attack, although the council said the building was destroyed and there were victims under the rubble.

For the first time, Russia has unleashed its “invincible” hypersonic weapons in Ukraine, as UK intelligence chiefs warned of a new strategy that will kill many more civilians.

According to the defence ministry, the Kremlin used its newest Kinzhal (‘Dagger’) missiles on Friday to destroy a weapons storage complex in the country’s west.

“A big underground storage housing missiles and aviation ammunition in the village of Deliatyn in the Ivano-Frankivsk region was destroyed by the Kinzhal aviation missile system with hypersonic aeroballistic missiles,” it claimed on Saturday.

The unconfirmed incident occurred in a territory that shares a 50-kilometer border with Romania, a Nato member.

In 2016, it was thought that Russian hypersonic missiles were employed for the first time in Syria.

Russia has been compelled to adjust its operational approach, according to the latest British defence intelligence assessment, and is now adopting an attrition strategy.

“This is likely to involve the employment of indiscriminate weapons, resulting in greater civilian casualties, destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, and exacerbation of the humanitarian crisis,” the Ministry of Defense said on Saturday.

According to sources from Ukraine’s government, Russia used nearly all of its Kaliber cruise missiles and Iskander ballistic missiles in the first 20 days of the war.