Russia bombards Kyiv as European leaders head to Ukraine’s capital
Premium
5 min read . Updated: 15 Mar 2022, 05:06 PM IST City’s mayor imposes 36-hour curfew amid pause in talks between two sides
KYIV (UKRAINE) : Russia lobbed more missiles into Kyiv Tuesday, amid heightened fighting in the city’s outskirts as a delegation of European heads of state headed to the embattled Ukrainian capital to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
One missile destroyed a building associated with an arms maker in central Kyiv in a predawn strike, blowing the windows out of buildings in a one-block radius. Separately, two apartment buildings were hit, setting fire to one of them.
Two residents died in the apartment complex and dozens were taken to a nearby hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation. There were no fatalities at the arms facility, officials said.
With Russian forces pushing to the city’s limits, Kyiv’s mayor said he was imposing a 36-hour curfew from late Tuesday. Heavy artillery barrages again shook the city early Tuesday and a firefight overnight lit up the western horizon with tracer bullets.
The delegation of Central European government leaders visiting Kyiv plan to offer a broad package of support for Ukraine, the Polish government said. Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and Prime Minister of Slovenia Janez Janša were set to meet with Mr. Zelensky and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal as representatives of the European Council.
The European Union also agreed on a fourth sanctions package targeting Russia, including a broad ban on energy-sector investment and high-value luxury goods and new targeted sanctions against Russian business executives and oligarchs, diplomats said.
The overnight attacks occurred as Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were gearing up for more talks that had paused Monday.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, has previously said Ukraine’s negotiators would focus on achieving a cease-fire, the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops and security guarantees for the country. “A technical pause has been taken in the negotiations until tomorrow," Mr. Podolyak wrote on Twitter. “Negotiations continue."
Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who is leading the Russian delegation at the talks, said that negotiations with the Ukrainian side would continue “every day, seven days a week" via videoconference, he wrote on his Telegram messenger channel following Monday’s talks. He said the format saved time and money.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that “the work is difficult" but the fact that talks are continuing was positive.
Twenty days into the war, Russia has seized territory in the south of Ukraine but has been stopped short around Kyiv and elsewhere. Increasingly, its forces have resorted to bombing residential areas and civilian infrastructure in an effort to wear down Ukrainian resistance. The death toll from a rocket attack on the western city of Rivne on Monday rose to 19, the local military administration said.
Ukraine’s military also said it had detected a Russian surveillance drone crossing the border into neighboring Poland. The drone was shot down by Ukrainian air defenses after it crossed back into Ukraine’s airspace, the air force said overnight.
The drone appeared to be surveilling a Ukrainian military training center close to the Polish border struck by Russian missiles on Sunday, killing at least 35 people.
MINT PREMIUM See All
It was the latest incident in recent days of a drone from the war zone passing into the airspace of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member.
Romania said it was investigating a drone crash on its territory. Another drone, suspected to be of Ukrainian origin, crashed days earlier in Croatia, prompting the government there to ask the French military to conduct a surveillance flight of its airspace. That flight showed nothing suspicious, the French military said.
Civilian casualties are likely to climb sharply, officials warn, as fighting moves further into cities from outlying suburbs, and Russian heavy weaponry is brought to bear on buildings to destroy Ukrainian resistance.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said there were plans to evacuate civilians through nine humanitarian corridors on Tuesday, including a humanitarian aid convoy heading to the besieged port city of Mariupol.
The national police said Russian forces on Monday fired mortars on a convoy of buses evacuating civilians from Hostomel, northwest of Kyiv. The driver of one of the buses was injured in the shelling, and a woman traveling in a civilian vehicle was killed. The rest made it to safety.
The number of people fleeing the fighting in Ukraine is now roughly 3 million, according to United Nations data.
Mr. Zelensky is scheduled to deliver a virtual address to members of Congress on Wednesday. The Ukrainian president has called for more assistance from Western allies, and many U.S. lawmakers have pressed the Biden administration to take further action.
The White House is discussing a possible trip by Mr. Biden to Europe in the coming weeks, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.
Armaments supplied to Ukraine by the U.S. and its European allies—especially antitank and antiaircraft weapons—have played an important role in checking the advance of Russian ground troops, who have suffered heavy casualties in the north as they have tried to encircle Kyiv.
Early Tuesday local time, Mr. Zelensky, citing the heavy losses, urged Russian troops to stop fighting. “If you surrender to our forces, we will treat you the way people are supposed to be treated. As people, decently. In a way you were not treated in your army," he said in a statement.
He thanked those Russians voicing their opposition to the war, singling out an antiwar protester who ran onto the set of an evening news program on Russian state television’s flagship Channel One on Monday holding a poster reading: “No war. Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They lie to you here. Russians against war." She yelled: “Stop the war, no to war" before the camera cut away.
Russia’s Defense Ministry on Tuesday said its forces seized “a stronghold of nationalists and foreign mercenaries" north of Kyiv, taking 10 Javelin missile systems and other weapons supplied by Western countries to Ukraine.
Russia’s ground offensives around Kyiv and the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv appear to be bogged down while Moscow’s troops switch to targeting civilian infrastructure and residential areas from afar. In the south, Russia has made faster headway, helped by its prior military presence on the Crimean Peninsula it annexed in 2014 and by a more favorable terrain.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that it has taken control of the entire Kherson region in the south of Ukraine.
Never miss a story! Stay connected and informed with Mint. Download our App Now!!