South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Russia renews strikes in Kyiv, west
Shelling intensifies in Kharkiv ahead of likely east offensive
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces accelerated scattered attacks on Kyiv, western Ukraine and beyond Saturday in an explosive reminder to Ukrainians and their Western supporters that the whole country remains under threat despite Moscow’s pivot toward mounting a new offensive in the east.
Stung by the loss of its Black Sea flagship and indignant over alleged Ukrainian aggression on Russian territory, Russia’s military command had warned of renewed missile strikes on Ukraine’s capital. Officials in Moscow said they were targeting military sites, a claim repeated and refuted by witnesses throughout 52 days of war.
The toll reaches much deeper. Each day brings new discoveries of civilian victims of an invasion that has shattered European security. As Russia prepared for the anticipated offensive, a mother wept over her 15-year-old son’s body after rockets hit a residential area of Kharkiv, a city in northeast Ukraine. An infant and at least eight other people died, officials said.
In apparent preparations for its assault on the east, the Russian military intensified shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in recent days. Friday’s attack killed civilians and wounded more than 50 people, the Ukrainian president’s office reported.
On Saturday an explosion believed to be caused by a missile sent emergency workers scrambling near an outdoor market in Kharkiv, according to AP journalists
at the scene. One person was killed, and at least 18 people were wounded, according to rescue workers.
“All the windows, all the furniture, all destroyed. And the door too,” recounted resident Valentina Ulianova.
In the Kyiv region, authorities have reported finding the bodies of more than 900 civilians, most shot dead, since Russian troops retreated two weeks ago. Smoke rose from the capital again early Saturday as Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported a strike that killed one person and wounded several.
The mayor advised residents who fled the city earlier in the war not to return.
“We’re not ruling out further strikes on the capital,” Klitschko said. “If you have the opportunity to stay
a little bit longer in the cities where it’s safer, do it.”
It was not immediately clear from the ground what was hit in the strike on Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district. The sprawling area on the southeastern edge of the capital contains a mixture of Soviet-style apartment blocks, newer shopping centers and big-box retail outlets, industrial areas and railyards.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said an armored vehicle plant was targeted. He didn’t specify where the factory was located, but there is one in the Darnytskyi district.
He said the plant was among multiple Ukrainian military sites hit with “airlaunched high-precision long-range weapons.” As the U.S. and Europe send new
arms to Ukraine, the strategy could be aimed at hobbling Ukraine’s defenses ahead of what’s expected to be a fullscale Russian assault in the east.
It was the second strike in the Kyiv area since the Russian military vowed this week to step up missile strikes on the capital. Another hit a missile plant Friday as residents emerged for walks, foreign embassies planned to reopen and other tentative signs of the city’s prewar life began to resurface following the failure of Russian troops to capture Kyiv and their withdrawal.
Kyiv was one of many targets Saturday. The Ukrainian president’s office reported missile strikes and shelling over the past 24 hours in eight regions across
the country.
The governor of the Lviv region in western Ukraine — long considered a safe zone — reported airstrikes on the region by Russian Su-35 aircraft that took off from neighboring Belarus.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who met with Vladimir Putin this past week in Moscow — the first European leader to do so since the invasion began Feb. 24 — said the Russian president is “in his own war logic” on Ukraine.
In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Nehammer said he thinks Putin believes he is winning the war and “we have to look in his eyes and we have to confront him with that, what we see in Ukraine.”
Nehammer also said he confronted Putin with what he saw during a visit to the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where graphic evidence has emerged of killings and torture under Russian occupation, and “it was not a friendly conversation.”
In southeastern Ukraine, the pummeled southern port city of Mariupol is holding out, but the situation is critical, the Ukrainian president’s office said. Russian troops have maintained a blockade there since the early days of the invasion.
In an interview, Zelenskyy told Ukrainian media that Russia’s siege of Mariupol could scuttle any attempts to negotiate an end to the war, saying, “The destruction of all our guys (there) ... can put an end to any format of negotiations.”