Mar 13, 2022: An air strike has been launched on a Ukrainian military base in Yavoriv in the west of the country near the Polish border, according to the Lviv regional military administration.

Russia “launched an air strike on the International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security”, head of the Lviv regional administration, Maxim Kozitsky, said on his verified Facebook page, adding that eight missiles were fired.

The centre, less than 25 kilometres from the Polish border, did not say whether it had been hit. It said it would release details later.

Meanwhile, Kyiv faces encirclement by advancing Russian forces who have also kept up a bombardment of the besieged southern port city of Mariupol. Only the roads to the south remain open in Kyiv and the city was preparing to mount a “relentless defence”, according to the Ukrainian presidency.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the capital, described by a senior Ukrainian official as a “city under siege”, was reinforcing defences and stockpiling food and medicine.

With people in Kyiv scrambling to escape with the bulk of Russian ground forces about 25km from the centre of the Ukrainian capital, and 12 days of Russian bombardment having killed 1,500 people in Mariupol, the U.S says it would rush up to $200m in additional small arms, anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russian National Defence Command Centre head Mikhail Mizintsev blames Ukraine for not letting people flee the fighting. Mizintsev said, “the Russian Federation for the eighth time provided humanitarian corridors in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol directions, one humanitarian corridor to the Russian Federation, and another one – through the territories controlled by the Kyiv authorities towards the western borders of Ukraine.”

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