Russia’s military bombed an art school sheltering as many as 400 people in the besieged city of Mariupol.  Just this past Wednesday Russian forces also bombed a theatre in Mariupol where satellite images show those sheltering had written “children” in Russian outside the building.  Ukrainian officials said there were as many as a thousand people inside.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a video address to the nation.

“To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come.”

Media reports this morning indicate that 90 per cent of the buildings in Mariupol have been bombed.

Saturday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened the Incident Response Group to discuss the war in Ukraine noting that since economic sanctions have been levied against key Russian elites, it has resulted in the ruble going down in value by 30 per cent.

The group announced new sanctions on 22 senior officials of Belarus’ Department of Defence who supported the attack, notably by allowing their country to serve as a launch pad for Russia’s ongoing aggression.

A year ahead of schedule Canada has renewed its multi-year commitment to Operation REASSURANCE which is the Canadian Armed Forces support to NATO’s assurance and deterrence measures in Central and Eastern Europe. Canada’s military support to the Russian invasion of Ukraine also includes an additional $50 million in defensive military equipment to Ukraine. That announcement was made last week by the Prime Minister.

The discussion included an update on the recent launch of the Job Bank’s Jobs for Ukraine webpage, which has already had over 54,000 visitors and 9,000 applications. The web page allows Canadian employers who wish to support Ukrainians with offers of employment to register these offers online.