(Kyiv) Russian forces, after taking their first major Ukrainian city, intensify their shelling of other cities on Thursday, accelerating the exodus of the population within hours of new talks for a ceasefire.
Posted at 6:15 a.m.
“We are going to rebuild every building, every street, every city,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a week after the start of the Russian invasion. “You are going to repay us fully for everything you have done against our state,” he added to the address from Moscow.
On the Russian side, the head of diplomacy Sergei Lavrov once again brandished the threat of a nuclear conflict, blaming the West.
“Everyone knows that a third world war can only be nuclear, but I draw your attention to the fact that it is in the minds of Western politicians, not in those of the Russians,” he said. said during an online press briefing.
On the ground, Ukrainian officials confirmed overnight from Wednesday to Thursday that the Russian army controlled Kherson, a metropolis of 290,000 inhabitants near the Crimean peninsula, after heavy bombardments.
Its mayor, Igor Kolykhayev, announced that he had discussed with “armed guests”, implying Russian troops.
“We had no weapons and were not aggressive. We have shown that we are working to secure the city and trying to deal with the consequences of the invasion,” he wrote on Facebook.
The head of the regional administration, Gennadi Lakhouta, called on Telegram residents to stay at home, indicating that “the (Russian) occupiers are in all parts of the city and very dangerous”.
Further east, in Mariupol, the situation “is deteriorating from hour to hour”, testified one of its inhabitants, Maryna, 28 years old.
This large Ukrainian port on the Sea of Azov, a key site to allow Russian forces arriving from Donbass, in the northeast, and Crimea, in the southwest, to join, “is resisting” for the moment, according to the Ukrainian army.
The Russians “did not achieve their main goal, which is to capture the city and push to the administrative borders” of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, partially controlled by pro-Russian forces since 2014, she said.
In the north of the country, Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city near the Russian border and already hit by deadly bombardments on Tuesday and Wednesday, was shelled all night, according to regional authorities. A Ukrainian member of the local mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is among the dead, the OSCE said.
200 km from Kharkiv, the metropolis of Dnipro, an industrial center of a million inhabitants and spared for the moment, was preparing for a Russian assault. Residents were piling up sandbags and preparing Molotov cocktails.
Russian forces were also in the towns of Cherniguiv and Nizhyne, some 150 km northeast and east of Kyiv, and in Sumy and Okhtyrka, some 350 km east of the capital, but “try to avoid fighting” with the Ukrainian army, according to the latter.
In Kyiv, loud explosions were heard overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, according to posts on social media.
Thousands of women and children took refuge in the metro, transformed into an air-raid shelter.
” Hell ”
150 km west of Kyiv, in Zhytomyr, Oleg Roubak doomed Vladimir Putin to “hell for eternity”, after a strike Tuesday evening which killed his wife and destroyed his house.
“I want the whole world to listen to my story,” he told AFP. A story of simple happiness until the Russian invasion shattered it.
The Russian military advance comes as Russian-Ukrainian talks are due to begin Thursday at 3 p.m. local time (7 a.m. EST) on the Belarusian-Polish border, said Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky, who the day before had mentioned that the talks should bring about a ceasefire.
Initial talks on Monday, at the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, had yielded no tangible results. Kyiv demanded an immediate end to the invasion, while Moscow seemed to expect a surrender.
US ‘will support Kyiv’s diplomatic efforts’ to secure ceasefire with Moscow, though ‘it’s much harder to achieve when gunfire is ringing and tanks are advancing’, chief says of American diplomacy Antony Blinken.
The Secretary of State, who will be in Poland, the Baltic countries and Moldova in the coming days to reaffirm the support of the United States against Russia, warned of an already “staggering human cost”. “.
“Hundreds if not thousands of civilians have been killed and injured,” he said.
The head of French diplomacy Jean-Yves Le Drian also feared that “the worst is ahead of us”, with “a siege logic” of Ukrainian cities, already used by the Russians in Syria and Chechnya.
After other European countries, France has called on its nationals whose presence is not “essential” to leave Russia.
The day before, French President Emmanuel Macron had nevertheless shown his desire to “stay in contact” with Vladimir Putin to “convince him to give up arms”.
One million refugees
The murderous shelling of Ukrainian cities is causing great emotion in the world. Anti-war demonstrations and outpourings of solidarity with the Ukrainians have multiplied, in view of the bombardments and the exodus from Ukraine of more than a million people, according to the latest figures from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
They first fled to Poland, Hungary, Romania and Moldova, but some also began to arrive by train in Berlin from Warsaw. The mayor of the German capital, Franziska Giffey, expects to take care of up to 20,000 refugees.
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told AFP that he had raised $1.5 billion in emergency aid for Ukraine.
Russia’s isolation became clear on Wednesday at the United Nations General Assembly: the 193 member countries overwhelmingly voted for a resolution that “demands that Russia immediately cease the use of force against Ukraine”. Only five countries opposed it, 35 abstaining, including China.
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the British Karim Khan, announced Wednesday evening the “immediate opening” of an investigation into war crimes against Russia.
Collapse of the ruble
The economic sanctions imposed on Moscow by the Western camp are getting tougher.
The EU has confirmed that seven Russian banks will, from March 12, be excluded from the Swift messaging system, a key cog in international finance, while the World Bank has cut all its aid programs in Russia and Belarus. .
Financial rating agencies Fitch and Moody’s have downgraded Russia to the category of countries at risk of not being able to repay their debt.
After losing more than a third of its value in foreign currencies, the ruble plunged again by more than 11% on Thursday morning.
Moscow is stepping up measures to defend its economy, but also to stifle any voice opposed to the war: the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy scuttled itself on Thursday after being banned from airing on Tuesday. Its teams still intend to exist on foreign platforms such as YouTube.
As a result of Russia’s economic isolation, the prices of hydrocarbons and aluminum, of which Moscow is a major exporter, continued to soar. The barrel of WTI oil exceeded 115 dollars, a record since 2008.
Russia is also now virtually banned from the world of sport and culture. Latest exclusion measure to date: the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) on Thursday excluded Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Winter Games which start Friday in Beijing.