ROME — The Vatican’s daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, called out Russia on Friday for bombing the citizens of six major Ukrainian cities, resulting in numerous civilian deaths.
“Despite the opening of some humanitarian corridors, civilian casualties of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine are increasing,” the newspaper lamented in a front-page article headlined “Russian Bombings Devastate Ukraine and Do Not Spare Civilians.”
“At least six large cities under siege live daily under the nightmare of bombing,” the Vatican paper asserts, including three airstrikes in Dnipro that hit a nursery and an apartment building, according to a Friday report by Ukrainian state emergency services. Another mortar destroyed a shoe factory.
Meanwhile, in the northwestern city of Lutsk, not far from the Polish border, rockets exploded in the airport. Lutsk, the capital of Volhynia Oblast, is located 150 kilometers north of Lviv, convergence point for those trying to leave the country and the temporary relocation site for many Western embassies.
Ukrainian police officers outside a residential building damaged by a missile on February 25, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Pierre Crom/Getty Images)
The most dramatic situation, the paper insists, is that of Mariupol, a strategic port city on the Sea of Azov. A pincer maneuver is tightening on the people between Moscow’s troops and the militias of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic.
The deputy mayor of Mariupol reported that more than 1,200 corpses have been removed from the streets and the bodies are now being buried in mass graves. A dramatic short supply of goods has led to brawls and looting in a mad dash to obtain water, food, medicine, and fuel.
From Kiev, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russians Friday of launching an attack on the Mariupol humanitarian corridor. “We are facing a terrorist state,” he said. Ukrainian authorities warned that no one has been able to leave the besieged city and the Russian police are preventing the delivery of aid.
The Vatican’s increasingly explicit rhetoric in describing the Russian invasion of Ukraine represents a notable departure from earlier efforts to soft-pedal the “conflict” by maintaining diplomatic niceties and avoiding placing the blame on either side.
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