Russia bogged down, blasting Ukrainian cities as war enters fourth week

Russian forces in Ukraine are blasting cities and killing civilians but no longer making progress on the ground, Western countries said on Thursday.

Russian forces in Ukraine are blasting cities and killing civilians but no longer making progress on the ground, Western countries said on Thursday, as the war, Moscow was thought to have hoped to win within days, entered its fourth week.

Local officials said rescuers in the besieged southern port of Mariupol were combing the rubble of a theatre, where women and children had been sheltering, bombed by Russian forces the previous day.

"The bomb shelter held. Now the rubble is being cleared. There are survivors. We don’t know about the (number of) victims yet," mayoral adviser Petro Andrushchenko told Reuters by phone.

Russia denied striking the theatre, which commercial satellite pictures showed had the word "children" marked out on the ground in front before it was blown up.

Mariupol has suffered the worst humanitarian catastrophe of the war, with hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in basements with no food, water or power for weeks. Russian forces have begun letting some people out in private cars this week but have blocked aid convoys from reaching the city.