Ukraine civilians trapped by Russian bombardment
Russian forces stepped up shelling of cities yesterday in Ukraine’s centre, north and south, a Ukrainian official said, as a second attempt to evacuate besieged civilians collapsed. Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, shifted blame for the war to Ukraine and said Moscow’s invasion could be halted “only if Kyiv ceases hostilities”.
“The latest wave of missile strikes came as darkness fell,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich said on television.
The outskirts of Kyiv, Chernihiv in the north, Mykolaiv in the south, and Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, faced intense shelling. Heavy artillery hit residential areas in Kharkiv and shelling damaged a television tower.
The attacks dashed hopes that more people could escape the fighting in Ukraine, where Russia’s plan to quickly overrun the country has been stymied by fierce resistance. Russia has made significant advances in southern Ukraine and along the coast, but many of its efforts have become stalled, including an immense military convoy that has been almost motionless for days north of Kyiv.
Food, water, medicine and almost all other supplies were in desperately short supply in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Russian and Ukrainian forces had agreed to an 11-hour cease-fire that would allow civilians and the wounded to be evacuated. But Russian attacks quickly closed the humanitarian corridor, Ukrainian officials said.
“There can be no ‘green corridors’ because only the sick brain of the Russians decides when to start shooting and at whom,” Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said on Telegram.
Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskiy rallied his people to remain defiant, especially those in cities occupied by Russians.
“You should take to the streets! You should fight!” he said on Sunday on Ukrainian television.
Zelenskiy asked the United States and Nato countries to send more warplanes to Ukraine, though that idea is complicated by questions about which countries would provide the aircraft and how those countries would replace the planes.
The Russian military has warned Ukraine’s neighbours against hosting its warplanes, saying that Moscow may consider those counties part of the conflict if Ukrainian aircraft fly combat missions from their territory.
Zelenskiy also reiterated a request for foreign protectors to impose a nofly zone over Ukraine, which Nato so far has ruled out because of concerns such an action would lead to a far wider war.
The war, now in its 12th day, has caused 1.5 million people to flee the country. The head of the UN refugee agency called the exodus “the fastestgrowing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II”.
A senior US defence official said the US assesses that about 95 per cent of the Russian forces that had been arrayed around Ukraine are now in the country. The official said Russian forces continue to advance and attempt to isolate Kyiv, Kharkhiv and Chernihiv, and are being met with strong Ukrainian resistance.
The official said the convoy outside Kyiv continues to be stalled.
As he has often done, Putin blamed Ukraine for the war, telling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Kyiv needed to stop all hostilities and fulfil “the well-known demands of Russia”.
Putin launched his invasion with a string of false accusations against Kyiv, including that it is led by neoNazis intent on undermining Russia with the development of nuclear weapons.
The Russian Defence Ministry yesterday announced that its forces intend to strike Ukraine’s militaryindustrial complex with what it said were precision weapons.
A ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, claimed in a statement carried by the state news agency Tass that Ukrainian personnel were being forced to repair damaged military equipment so it could be sent back into action.
Zelenskiy criticised Western leaders for not responding to Russia’s latest threat.
“I didn’t hear even a single world leader react to this,” Zelenskiy said.
Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke about the nuclear situation in Ukraine, which has 15 nuclear reactors at four power plants and was the scene of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
The men agreed in principle to a “dialogue” involving Russia, Ukraine and the UN’s atomic watchdog, according to a French official who spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with the presidency’s practices. Potential talks on the issue are to be organised in the coming days, he said.
The death toll remains lost in the fog of war. The UN says it has confirmed just a few hundred civilian deaths but also warned that the number is a vast undercount.