By CARA AN­NA | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

(AP) — Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin ap­peared at a huge flag-wav­ing ral­ly at a Moscow sta­di­um Fri­day and praised his coun­try’s troops in bib­li­cal terms as they rained lethal fire on Ukraine’s cities.

“Shoul­der to shoul­der, they help and sup­port each oth­er,” Putin said of the Krem­lin’s forces in a rare pub­lic ap­pear­ance since the in­va­sion three weeks ago that made Rus­sia an out­cast among na­tions and trig­gered an­ti-war protests at home. “We have not had uni­ty like this for a long time,” he added to cheers from the crowd.

Moscow po­lice said more than 200,000 peo­ple were in and around the Luzh­ni­ki sta­di­um for the cel­e­bra­tion mark­ing the eighth an­niver­sary of Rus­sia’s an­nex­a­tion of the Crimean Penin­su­la, seized from Ukraine.

The event in­clud­ed pa­tri­ot­ic songs, in­clud­ing a per­for­mance of “Made in the U.S.S.R.,” with the open­ing lines “Ukraine and Crimea, Be­larus and Moldo­va, it’s all my coun­try.”

Seek­ing to por­tray the war as just, Putin para­phrased the Bible to say of Rus­sia’s troops: “There is no greater love than giv­ing up one’s soul for one’s friends.” And he con­tin­ued to in­sist his ac­tions were nec­es­sary to pre­vent “geno­cide,” a claim flat­ly de­nied by lead­ers around the globe.

Video feeds of the event showed a loud­ly cheer­ing crowd that broke in­to chants of “Rus­sia!”

Sev­er­al Telegram chan­nels crit­i­cal of the Krem­lin re­port­ed that stu­dents and em­ploy­ees of state in­sti­tu­tions in a num­ber of re­gions were or­dered by their su­pe­ri­ors to at­tend ral­lies and con­certs mark­ing the Crimea an­niver­sary. Those re­ports could not be in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied.

In the wake of the in­va­sion, the Krem­lin has clamped down hard­er on dis­sent and the flow of in­for­ma­tion, ar­rest­ing thou­sands of an­ti-war pro­test­ers, ban­ning sites such as Face­book and Twit­ter, and in­sti­tut­ing tough prison sen­tences for what is deemed to be false re­port­ing on the war, which Moscow refers to as a “spe­cial mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion.”

The OVD-In­fo rights group that mon­i­tors po­lit­i­cal ar­rests re­port­ed that at least sev­en in­de­pen­dent jour­nal­ists had been de­tained ahead of or while cov­er­ing the an­niver­sary events in Moscow and St. Pe­ters­burg.

Stand­ing on stage in a white turtle­neck and a blue down jack­et, Putin spoke for about five min­utes. Some peo­ple, in­clud­ing pre­sen­ters at the event, wore T-shirts or jack­ets with a “Z” — a sym­bol seen on Russ­ian tanks and oth­er mil­i­tary ve­hi­cles in Ukraine and em­braced by sup­port­ers of the war.

Putin’s quot­ing of the Bible and a Russ­ian ad­mi­ral of the 18th cen­tu­ry re­flect­ed his in­creas­ing fo­cus in re­cent years on his­to­ry and re­li­gion as bind­ing forces in Rus­sia’s post-So­vi­et so­ci­ety.

The ral­ly came as Russ­ian troops con­tin­ued to pound the Ukrain­ian cap­i­tal, Kyiv, and launched a bar­rage of mis­siles against an air­craft re­pair in­stal­la­tion at an air­port on the out­skirts of the west­ern city of Lviv, close to the Pol­ish bor­der. One per­son was re­port­ed wound­ed.

Satel­lite pho­tos showed the strike de­stroyed a re­pair hangar and ap­peared to dam­age two oth­er build­ings. A row of fight­er jets ap­peared in­tact, but an ap­par­ent im­pact crater sat in front of them.

Ukraine said it had shot down two of six mis­siles in the vol­ley, which came from the Black Sea.

The ear­ly morn­ing at­tack was the clos­est strike yet to the cen­tre of Lviv, which has be­come a cross­roads for peo­ple flee­ing from oth­er parts of Ukraine and for oth­ers en­ter­ing to de­liv­er aid or join the fight. The war has swelled the city’s pop­u­la­tion by some 200,000.

In city af­ter city around Ukraine, hos­pi­tals, schools and build­ings where peo­ple sought safe­ty have been at­tacked. Res­cue work­ers con­tin­ued to search for sur­vivors in the ru­ins of a the­atre that was be­ing used a shel­ter when it was blast­ed by a Russ­ian airstrike Wednes­day in the be­sieged south­ern city of Mar­i­upol.

Lud­my­la Deniso­va, the Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment’s hu­man rights com­mis­sion­er, said at least 130 peo­ple had sur­vived the the­atre bomb­ing.

“But ac­cord­ing to our da­ta, there are still more than 1,300 peo­ple in these base­ments, in this bomb shel­ter,” Deniso­va told Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion. “We pray that they will all be alive, but so far there is no in­for­ma­tion about them.”

Ear­ly morn­ing bar­rages al­so hit a res­i­den­tial build­ing in the Podil neigh­bour­hood of Kyiv, killing at least one per­son, ac­cord­ing to emer­gency ser­vices, who said 98 peo­ple were evac­u­at­ed from the build­ing. Kyiv May­or Vi­tali Kl­itschko said 19 were wound­ed in the shelling.

Two oth­ers were killed when strikes hit res­i­den­tial and ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ings in the east­ern city of Kram­a­torsk, ac­cord­ing to the re­gion­al gov­er­nor, Pavlo Kyrylenko.

The fight­ing has led near­ly 3.3 mil­lion peo­ple to flee Ukraine, by the U.N.′ s es­ti­mate. The death toll re­mains un­clear, though thou­sands of civil­ians and sol­diers on both sides are be­lieved to have been killed.

Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy said Ukraine’s de­fens­es have proved much stronger than ex­pect­ed, and Rus­sia “didn’t know what we had for de­fense or how we pre­pared to meet the blow.”

World lead­ers have de­mand­ed Rus­sia be in­ves­ti­gat­ed for pos­si­ble war crimes over its at­tacks on civil­ians. The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion said it has con­firmed 43 at­tacks on hos­pi­tals and oth­er health care fa­cil­i­ties, with 12 peo­ple killed.

Both Ukraine and Rus­sia this week re­port­ed some progress in ne­go­ti­a­tions. Ear­li­er this week, an of­fi­cial in Ze­len­skyy’s of­fice, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the sen­si­tive talks, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that Ukraine was pre­pared to dis­cuss a neu­tral sta­tus for the coun­try in re­turn, in part, for bind­ing se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees.

Rus­sia has de­mand­ed NA­TO pledge nev­er to ad­mit Ukraine to the al­liance or sta­tion forces there.

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As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Yuras Kar­manau in Lviv, Ukraine, and oth­er AP jour­nal­ists around the world con­tributed to this re­port.