ATHENS — The harder America tightens the economic screws on Russia as its war passes the two-week mark, the more one can count on Vladimir Putin’s people to lash out. 

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, on Wednesday accused America of waging economic war on Russia and, oddly, used the term “hostile bacchanalia” in describing what he said the West was doing. He said Moscow will think carefully about how to respond to President Biden’s announcement yesterday about a ban on the imports of Russian oil. 

More than the seizure of some Russian oligarchs’ yachts — if less glamorous — the ban on Russian energy imports will put a serious dent in Moscow’s coffers, and hence the Kremlin’s colorful vitriol.  

The war of words comes as news broke late Wednesday of a devastating Russian airstrike in the already battered southern city of Mariupol. Radio Free Europe reported that President Zelensky accused Russia of hitting a children’s and maternity hospital and that an as yet unspecified number of children were among the people “under the wreckage.” The Associated Press reported 17 people were injured.

Mr. Zelensky tweeted: “This is an atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice by ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity.” 

Meanwhile, Sky News says a senior American defense official believes the Russians may be dropping “dumb munitions” on Ukraine — meaning they do not have precise targets. The unidentified official added that it’s “not totally clear whether that is by design or by default because they are potentially experiencing faults in their precision guided targeting process.”

Russia’s announced provisional humanitarian corridors, meant to ensure citizens’ safe passage from Kiev, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Mariupol, had only mixed results, Radio Free Europe also reported, “with only safe corridors out of the eastern city of Sumy and the southern city of Enerhodar.”

The violence on the ground in places like Mariupol, said by the Red Cross to be facing “apocalyptic” conditions, comes on the same day that Mr. Biden announced the dispatch of two Patriot missile batteries to Poland for what has been called a “defensive deployment,” and as Vice President Harris arrived in Poland on a three-day trip that will likely begin with addressing Poland’s offer to hand its Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets to the U.S., a proposal Washington rejected as unworkable. 

Ms. Harris is also scheduled to visit the Romanian capital of Bucharest, a move likely to be keenly watched by the Kremlin: Russia has indicated that should fighter jets of any manufacture eventually take off from Romania — a member of NATO since 2004 — to attack Russian forces, it would be construed as a belligerent act.

Earlier this week The Daily Mail reported that a Russian defense ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, said: “We know for sure that Ukrainian combat aircraft have flown to Romania and other neighboring countries,” adding that “the use of the airfield network of these countries for basing Ukrainian military aviation with the subsequent use of force against Russia’s army can be regarded as the involvement of these states in an armed conflict.”

The Lviv-based newspaper Ekspres reported that the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said in a Facebook post that Russia “has regrouped its troops to attack Kiev,” and includes an intriguing account of some developments on the ground. According to the report, “the occupiers plan to use the most capable units in the assault, including regiments that have served in Grozny, Kemerovo in Siberia, and Moscow, as well as a private military company called ‘League.’” 

That company may have formerly been part of the private Wagner militia group, funded by a crony of Mr. Putin, though that claim has not been independently corroborated. 

The report adds that an advisor to the head of the president’s office, Alexei Arestovich, said the army had “destroyed” a huge group of Russian troops heading toward Kiev, and listed some details: “A huge operative group was disbanded between Kharkiv and Suny. It is now gone. It was partly killed, partly transferred to Kharkiv and stopped there, partly retreated and licked its wounds. There is no need to be afraid. The Russian army is not strong, it is just long. We will eat them slowly, like salami.”

On a more strategic note, the newspaper said that, according to the Ukrainian military, “the main tasks of the occupiers are to create a land corridor between Crimea and the mainland of the Russian Federation, full control over Mariupol, encirclement and capture of Kiev, and access to the administrative borders of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.”

In other economic developments, U.S. congressional leaders have reached a bipartisan deal to provide $13.6 billion to help Ukraine fend off its invasion by Russia and assist European allies coping with the continent’s worst refugee crisis since World War II, the Associated Press reports. 

Also, according to a cabinet resolution published on Wednesday, Ukraine’s government will ban exports of food staples including rye, barley, buckwheat, millet, sugar, salt, and meat until the end of the year, a move that makes sense for a country at war and one whose history includes dark chapters of famine — but not likely to offset a global spike in the price of wheat anytime soon. 

Crippling sanctions on Russian instruments of banking following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine have been followed by a parade of major corporations that want to punish Mr. Putin by smacking his bottom line; yesterday, McDonald’s announced it would be closing all 850 restaurants in Russia, at least temporarily, adding to a growing list of companies as varied as Microsoft and Victoria’s Secret closing up shop in Russia as the war passes the two-week mark.