The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Russian forces close in on Ukraine capital
Nato deploys troops to protect allies amid sanction hike
RUSSIAN troops were bearing down on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv last night, with gunfire and explosions resonating ever closer to the government quarter.
Fears of the conflict growing heightened as Nato announced it would deploy troops to protect allies near Russia and Ukraine.
The European Union agreed to freeze the assets of Russian president Vladimir Putin and foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying the UK would follow “imminently”, and the US and other global powers announced further sanctions.
The Council of Europe suspended Russia from the continent’s leading human rights organisation and UN officials said they were preparing for millions to flee Ukraine.
Uefa stripped St Petersburg of May’s Champions League final and handed it to Paris, while Formula One bosses cancelled the Russian Grand Prix.
The European Broadcasting Union said Russia will no longer participate in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
Day two of Russia’s invasion focused on the Ukrainian capital, where explosions could be heard starting before dawn and gunfire was reported in several areas.
Ukrainian authorities used armoured vehicles and snowploughs to defend Kyiv and limit movement, and said Russian spies were seeking to infiltrate the city.
Russia’s military said it had seized a strategic airport outside Kyiv that would allow it to quickly build up forces to take the capital.
It claimed to have already cut the city off from the west – the direction most of those escaping the invasion are heading in, with lines of cars snaking towards the Polish border.
Intense fire broke out on a bridge across the Dnipro River, dividing the eastern and western sides of Kyiv, with about 200 Ukrainian forces establishing defensive positions and taking shelter behind their armoured vehicles and later under the bridge.
Ukrainian officials reported at least 137 deaths on the Ukrainian side and claimed hundreds on the Russian one. Russian authorities released no casualty figures.
UN officials reported 25 civilian deaths, mostly from shelling and air strikes, and said 100,000 people were believed to have left their homes and estimated up to four million could flee if the fighting escalates.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded with Moscow to hold talks, and with western powers to act faster to cut off Russia’s economy and provide military help.
“When bombs fall on Kyiv, it happens in Europe, not just in Ukraine,” he said. “When missiles kill our people, they kill all Europeans.”
His whereabouts were kept secret after he told European leaders he was number one on Russia’s list of targets.
He also offered to negotiate on one of Mr Putin’s key demands: That Ukraine declare itself neutral and abandon its ambition of joining Nato.
The Russian president’s spokesman said the Kremlin could consider the idea, but Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested it may be too late, saying Mr Zelensky had “missed the opportunity” to discuss a non-aligned status for Ukraine when Mr Putin previously proposed it.
After denying for weeks that he planned to invade, Mr Putin argued that the West left him no choice by refusing to negotiate on his security demands.
He gave a strongly worded statement yesterday urging the Ukrainian military to surrender, saying: “We would find it easier to agree with you than with that gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis who have holed up in Kyiv and have taken the entire Ukrainian people hostage.”
Playing on Russian nostalgia for Second World War heroism, the Kremlin equates members of Ukrainian right-wing groups with neo-Nazis.
Mr Zelensky, who is Jewish, angrily dismisses those claims.
The autocratic leader has not said what his ultimate plans for Ukraine are, but Mr Lavrov gave a hint, saying yesterday: “We want to allow the Ukrainian people to determine its own fate.”
Mr Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia recognises Mr Zelensky as Ukraine’s president, but would not say how long the Russian military operation could last.
The Ukrainian military yesterday reported significant fighting near Ivankiv, about 40 miles north-west of Kyiv, as Russian forces apparently tried to advance on the capital from the north.
Russian troops also entered the city of Sumy, near the border with Russia, which sits on a highway leading to Kyiv from the east.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Kyiv “could well be under siege” in what US officials believe is a brazen attempt by Mr Putin to install his own regime.
The assault, anticipated for weeks by the West, amounts to the largest ground war in Europe since the Second World War.
After repeatedly denying plans to invade, Mr Putin launched his attack on the country, which has increasingly tilted towards the democratic West and away from Moscow’s sway.
Mr Zelensky appealed to global leaders for even more severe sanctions than the ones imposed by western allies and for defence assistance.
“If you don’t help us now, if you fail to offer a powerful assistance to Ukraine, tomorrow the war will knock on your door,” said the leader, who cut diplomatic ties with Moscow, declared martial
law and ordered a full military mobilisation that would last 90 days.
The invasion began on Thursday with a series of missile strikes on cities and military bases, and quickly followed with a multipronged ground assault that rolled troops in from several areas in the east, from the southern region of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and from Belarus to the north.
After Ukrainian officials said they lost control of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant, scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, Russia said it was working with the Ukrainians to secure the plant.
Meanwhile, in the face of Russian aggression, thousands of Ukrainians fled, crossing the borders into countries to the west in search of safety.
Cars were backed up for several miles at some border crossings as authorities in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova mobilised to receive them, offering shelter, food and legal help. They also eased usual border procedures including Covid-19 testing requirements.
At a major border crossing in Medyka, Poland, Ukrainians arrived on foot and by car and train and were greeted by Polish authorities and volunteers offering food and hot drinks. Slovakian police said most of the people arriving at the border were women with children after Ukraine banned men aged 18 to 60 from leaving the country, and this appeared to be the case everywhere.
Some sought to join relatives who had already settled in Poland and other EU nations, whose strong economies have for years attracted Ukrainian workers.
Marika Sipos fled Koson, a village in western Ukraine close to the Hungarian border, arriving early yesterday in Lonya, Hungary.
“We had to leave behind everything, our whole life’s work,” she said, describing it as a “terrible feeling” to leave her property.
Erika Barta, arriving from Backi Breg, Ukraine, said she would seek shelter with relatives in Hungary and planned to return when the danger passes.
For many, the first stop was a train station in Przemysl, a city near Medyka in south-eastern Poland, which is a transit point for many.
Ukrainians slept on camp beds and in chairs as they awaited their next moves, relieved for now just to escape the shelling of Kyiv and other places.
Italian premier Mario Draghi spoke in parliament yesterday of the “long lines of cars leaving Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, heading mostly towards EU borders”, and said “it is possible to imagine a huge influx of refugees toward neighbouring European countries”.
“The images we are seeing – of unarmed civilians forced to hide in bunkers and subways – are terrible and bring us back to the darkest days of European history,” he said.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, estimated more than 100,000 people were believed to have left their homes in Ukraine and that up to four million people may flee to other countries if the situation escalates.
Hungary, which mobilised its military to help, announced this week that all Ukrainian citizens arriving from Ukraine, and all third-country nationals legally residing there, would be entitled to protection.
The welcome that Poland and Hungary are showing Ukrainians is very different from the unwelcoming stance they have had to refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa in recent years.
Hungary built a wall to keep them out when a million people, many Syrians fleeing war, arrived in Europe in 2015.
Poland is building its own wall at the Belarus border after thousands of mostly Middle Eastern migrants sought to enter in recent months.