Kyiv, Mar. 25: As many as 300 people are feared dead in the bombing of a theater in the Ukraine city of Mariupol last week, reported news agency AFP quoting local authorities. “From eyewitnesses, information is emerging that about 300 people died in the Drama Theatre of Mariupol following strikes by a Russian aircraft,” Mariupol city hall wrote on Telegram.

Ukrainian troops are recapturing towns east of Kyiv and Russian forces who had been trying to seize the capital are falling back on overextended supply lines, Britain said on Friday, one of the strongest indications yet of a shift in momentum in the war. The mayor of a suburb east of Kyiv said Ukrainian troops had recaptured a nearby village and thousands of civilians were leaving the area in response to a call from the authorities to get out of the way of the counter-attack. On Thursday, Ukraine said its forces had destroyed the Russian landing ship the ‘Orsk’ at the Russian-occupied port of Berdyansk. Video footage showed smoke rising from a blaze at a dock and the flash of an explosion.

US President Joe Biden and Western allies have pledged new sanctions and humanitarian aid in response to Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine, but their offers fell short of the more robust military assistance that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded for in a pair of live-video appearances.

One month into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, fire rained down on a shopping mall and high-rise buildings in Kyiv, as the outnumbered Ukrainian military waged intense battles to defend the capital and other key cities from falling under Russian control. Russian forces have wreaked destruction on cities throughout Ukraine over the past four weeks, but they appear to have stalled in many places in the face of fiercer-than-expected Ukrainian resistance.

Nato estimated Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the war started on February 24. On Wednesday, the US made a formal determination that Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine, as some of the millions who have fled recount tales of horror.

As one woman told The Associated Press: "People are being killed day and night." And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for people around the world to show support for Ukraine on Thursday, which will mark the start of the war's second month.-Agencies