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

Russian president lashes out at 'traitors and scum' as USA's Joe Biden calls him a war criminal.

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

Ukraine said Russian forces had destroyed a theatre where women and children had been sheltering in the besieged southern port of Mariupol. An official in the Mariupol mayor's office said a bomb shelter at the theatre had "withstood" and there were survivors, but details of casualties were still not known.

Russia denied striking the theatre, which commercial satellite pictures showed had the