Ukraine slams attack on Kyiv amid new Mariupol evac effort
The strikes were the boldest Russian bombardment of the capital since Moscow’s forces retreated weeks ago following their failure to take the city
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of trying to humiliate the United Nations by raining missiles on Kyiv during a visit to the city by the UN chief, an attack that shattered weeks of relative calm in the capital and upset a tentative return to normal.
Ukraine’s forces, meanwhile, fought to hold off Russian attempts to advance in the south and east, Zelensky said. And UN-backed efforts to arrange safe passage for residents trapped in the ruins of Mariupol continued. An official in the president’s office said an evacuation could happen as soon as Friday.
Russia pounded targets all over Ukraine on Thursday, hitting a residential high-rise and another building in Kyiv. US-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said one of its journalists was killed.
Ex-American marine killed in Ukraine
Separately, former US Marine Willy Joseph Cancel, 22, was killed on Monday while working for a military contracting company that sent him to Ukraine, his mother, Rebecca Cabrera, told CNN. This would be the first known death of an American taking part in the war.
In an apparent reference to the attack in Kyiv, Russia’s defence ministry said it had destroyed “production buildings” at the Artem defence factory.
The bombardment came barely an hour after Zelensky held a news conference with UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, who toured some of the destruction in and around Kyiv and condemned attacks on civilians.
“This says a lot about Russia’s true attitude towards global institutions, about attempts of the Russian leadership to humiliate the UN and everything the organisation represents,” Zelensky said late on Thursday in his nightly video address to the nation. “Therefore, it requires a correspondingly powerful response.”
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said the attack was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s way of giving “his middle finger” to Guterres.
The strikes were the boldest Russian attack on the capital since Moscow’s forces retreated weeks ago following their failure to take the city.
One aim of Guterres’ visit was to secure the evacuation of people from the gutted southern port of Mariupol, including a shattered steelworks where an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian defenders and 1,000 civilians were holed up in the last major stronghold of resistance in the city. Previous evacuation attempts fell through.
About 100,000 people are trapped in the city with little water, food, heat or electricity.
Russia taking heavy losses
Ukraine acknowledged on Friday it was taking heavy losses in Russia’s assault in the east, but said Russia’s losses were even worse. Having failed in an assault on Kyiv in the north of Ukraine last month, Russia is now trying to fully capture two eastern provinces known as Donbas.
But so far, Russia’s troops and the separatist forces appear to have made only minor gains, and Britain’s defence ministry said those have been achieved at significant cost to the Kremlin’s forces. Ukraine has acknowledged losing control of some towns and villages there since the assault began last week, but says Moscow’s gains have come at a massive cost to a Russian force already worn down from its earlier defeat near the capital.
“We have serious losses but the Russians’ losses are much much bigger...They have colossal losses,” presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said, without elaborating.
Western officials said Russia had been suffering fewer casualties after narrowing the scale of its invasion but numbers were still “quite high”.
Zelensky’s office said Russia was pounding the entire front line in the eastern Donetsk region with rockets, artillery, mortar bombs and aircraft. The Ukrainian general staff said Russia was shelling positions along the line of contact to prevent the Ukrainians from regrouping.
A US official said the Russian offensive in Donbas appeared to be behind schedule.