(NewsNation) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday agreed that war crimes have been committed in Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
“Personally I agree,” Blinken said of President Joe Biden calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal saying, in his opinion, Putin is intentionally targeting civilians.
The White House had been avoiding applying the designation of war criminal to Putin, saying it requires investigation and an international determination. After Biden used the term in his speech Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president was “speaking from his heart” and renewed her statements that there is a process for making a formal determination.
“Russia is committing war crimes and targeting civilians,” Britain’s U.N. Mission tweeted, announcing the call for the meeting that was joined by the U.S., France and others. “Russia’s illegal war on Ukraine is a threat to us all.”
Blinken also told reporters that the United States is concerned that China is considering directly assisting Russia with military equipment.
Blinken said that Biden will make it clear to Chinese leader Xi Jinping that China will bear responsibility for any actions it takes to support Russia’s aggression.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office says Russia carried out further airstrikes on the besieged port city of Mariupol on Thursday morning, one day after his address to U.S. Congress.
Zelenskyy’s office didn’t report casualties for the latest strikes as the war rages for a fourth week. This news comes amid rescue efforts in the city after a theater where hundreds had been sheltering was bombed Wednesday in what Ukrainian authorities say was a Russian air strike. There are survivors but many remain trapped.
Russia denied striking the theater, which commercial satellite pictures showed had the word “children” marked out on the ground in front before it was blown up.
“People are escaping from Mariupol by themselves using their own transport,” Zelenskyy’s office said, adding the “risk of death remains high” because of Russian forces previously firing on civilians.
The presidential office also reported artillery and airstrikes around the country overnight, including in the Kalynivka and Brovary suburbs of the capital, Kyiv. It said fighting continues as Russian forces try to enter the Ukraine-held city of Mykolaiv in the south and that there was an artillery barrage through the night in the eastern town of Avdiivka.
Zelenskyy addressed the German parliament on Thursday for the first time, urging German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to tear down what he called a wall between “free and unfree” Europe and stop the war in Ukraine.
Damaged vehicles and buildings in Kharkiv city center in Ukraine, Wednesday, March 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Pavel Dorogoy) 
Ukrainian Emergency Service workers take a body out of debris at the City Hall building in the central square following the Russian shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Pavel Dorogoy) 
Flowers are placed around the graves of Ukrainian military servicemen Roman Rak and Mykola Mykytiuk in Starychi, western Ukraine, Wednesday, March 16, 2022. Rak and Mykytiu were killed during Sunday’s Russian missile strike on a military training base in Yavoriv. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue) 
Soldiers carry wooden logs while building a trench, in Lityn, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) 
German pianist of Italian descent Davide Martello, plays piano at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland, on Wednesday, March 16, 2022, for people who fled the war from Ukraine, background. Russia’s military forces are blasting Ukraine’s capital region and other major cities as they try to crush a Ukrainian defense that has frustrated their progress nearly three weeks after invading. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) 
A Ukrainian firefighter works near a destroyed apartment building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 16, 2022. Both Russia and Ukraine projected optimism ahead of another scheduled round of talks Wednesday, even as Moscow’s forces rained fire on Kyiv and other major cities in a bid to crush the resistance that has frustrated Kremlin hopes for a lightning victory. (AP Photo/Andrew Marienko) 
A Ukrainian soldier looks through binoculars at a military check point, in Lityn, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) 
This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows burning buildings in a residential area in northeast Chernihiv, Ukraine on Wednesday, March 16, 2022. (Maxar Technologies via AP)
Ukraine says Russian forces are increasingly resorting to artillery and air strikes as their advance stalls. Western countries agree.
The Ukrainian General Staff says, “The enemy, without success in its ground operation, continues to carry out rocket and bomb attacks on infrastructure and highly populated areas of Ukrainian cities.”
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. Local officials say missile strikes and shelling have killed more than 2,300 people. Russian forces began letting some residents out in private cars this week but have blocked aid convoys from reaching the city.
Viacheslav Chaus, governor of Chernihiv, reported 53 civilians including U.S. citizens had been killed there in the past 24 hours. The toll could not be independently verified.
Among the dead in Chernihiv was Jim Hill, an American man from Idaho, who had been seeking medical treatment for his partner.
Hill’s sister confirmed his death on Thursday and Blinken confirmed that an American citizen was killed in Ukraine.
In the capital Kyiv, a building in the Darnytsky district was extensively damaged by what the authorities said was debris from a missile shot down early Thursday.
Also Thursday, Russian artillery destroyed a school and a community center in Merefa, a city near the northeast city of Kharkiv, according to Merefa Mayor Veniamin Sitov. At least 21 people were killed.
In the meantime, peace talks have had limited progress. In Zelenskyy’s address to Congress, he asked the U.S. to “please take the lead.” In response, President Joe Biden announced an additional $800 million in security assistance for Ukraine. The new funding brings the total support to Ukraine over the past week to more than $1 billion.
Six nations have called for a U.N. Security Council meeting on Ukraine on Thursday afternoon, ahead of an expected vote Friday on a Russian resolution demanding protection for Ukrainian civilians “in vulnerable situations,” yet making no mention of Moscow’s responsibility for the war.
Kyiv and its Western allies believe Russia launched an unprovoked war to subjugate a neighbor that Putin calls an artificial state carved out of Russia. Moscow says it is carrying out a “special operation” to disarm it and “denazify”. Ukrainians on the ground continue to fight for their country.
More than 3 million Ukrainians have fled and thousands of civilians and combatants have died.