Russian forces tightened their grip around Kiev on Friday, with fighting ongoing in and around Ukraine’s capital, the second day of an invasion that the Ukrainian army was doing “everything possible” to repel.
The day after Vladimir Putin launched a massive attack on neighboring Ukraine, which has already left dozens dead and more than 100,000 displaced, the first fighting in the capital was reported.
Exchanges of fire and explosions were heard in the Obolon district. Several deaf detonations were also heard from the city center, according to AFP.
The Ukrainian army pointed out that “missile fire” was aimed at Kiev, stating that it had destroyed two in flight.
According to the mayor of the city, Vitali Klitschko, these shots injured three people, one of them seriously, in a residential area in the south-east of the capital.
Ukrainian forces also reported fighting Russian armor units in two localities north of Kiev, Dymer (45 km) and Ivankiv (80 km). Russian troops were also approaching the capital – deserted Friday morning, but which normally has nearly three million inhabitants – from the northeast and east, according to the Ukrainian army.
“Last night they started shelling civilian neighborhoods. It reminds us of (the Nazi) offensive of 1941,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday morning in a social media video, speaking the phrase in Russian, to Russian citizens.
He praised the “heroism” of the Ukrainians in the face of an invasion which according to him has already left 137 dead and 316 wounded on the Ukrainian side, assuring that his soldiers were doing “everything possible” to defend the country.
“Russia will have to talk to us sooner or later,” he added. “The sooner this conversation begins, the smaller the losses for Russia itself.”
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has called on civilians to take up arms.
“We ask citizens to inform us of enemy movements, make molotov cocktails, neutralize the occupier! “, he wrote in this message.
“Decapitate the government”
During the night, after the establishment of a curfew in Kiev and while Zelensky decreed the general mobilization, Western military sources had indicated that the Russian forces had already acquired “total air superiority” in Ukraine.
Their objective is to “decapitate the government” of Ukraine and replace it with a team favorable to Moscow, according to these sources.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia wanted to “liberate” Ukrainians from “oppression”, seeming to confirm the goal of a reversal of power.
Zelensky lamented that Ukraine was “left alone” against Russian forces. NATO, whose leaders were meeting by videoconference on Friday, said it would not deploy troops there.
US President Joe Biden also reiterated on Thursday that the United States would not send troops to Ukraine, but that they would not cede “an inch of NATO territory”. The Pentagon will send some 7,000 more troops to Germany.
“Total War”
France will accelerate the deployment within the framework of NATO of soldiers in Romania, a country bordering Ukraine, announced President Emmanuel Macron, while wanting to “leave the way open” for dialogue with Moscow.
“The war is total,” said its Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Friday. “President Putin has chosen (..) to take Ukraine off the map of states […] President Zelensky’s security is a central element” and Paris can “help him if necessary”.
He said he was “worried for the future”, especially for Moldova and Georgia. The two former Soviet republics include pro-Russian separatist territories.
Vladimir Putin threatened Westerners with an “immediate” response if they tried to “interfere”.
Making Putin ‘an outcast’
For now, the Western camp is focused on toughening sanctions against Russia, making it more difficult for its major financial institutions to access international financial markets, and drastically restricting its access to technology.
Joe Biden has promised to make Putin “a pariah on the international stage”.
“Russian leaders will face unprecedented isolation,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The Twenty-Seven did not, however, go so far as to exclude Russia from the Swift international banking exchange system, as Kiev demanded.
President Zelensky called on Europeans to call even further.
“The pressure on Russia must increase. That’s what I said” to the President of the European Commission, he said on Twitter on Friday.
After plunging Thursday morning, global stock markets were picking up again on Friday.
However, the environment remained very uncertain. Commodity prices remained very high, with a barrel of Brent oil holding above $100 even though US WTI had returned to around $95.
Russia and Ukraine are essential countries for the supply of oil, gas, wheat and other crucial raw materials.
More than 100,000 displaced
About 100,000 people have fled their homes in Ukraine and thousands have left their country, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said.
The EU said it was “fully prepared” to welcome them. A meeting of EU interior ministers is scheduled for this weekend to discuss the “humanitarian and security impact” of the crisis and “retaliatory measures”, according to a French official.
Hundreds of refugees have already arrived in Poland.
Some 200 people spent the night in the Polish station of Przemysl (southeast), transformed into a reception center.
Among them, Konstantin, who does not know “when or if I will return to Ukraine”: “The problem in Ukraine is huge” and “it will probably take months, maybe years to solve it”.
The Russian offensive began at dawn on Thursday, after Vladimir Putin recognized on Monday the independence of Ukrainian separatist territories in Donbass, sponsored by Moscow since 2014.
To justify this intervention, the master of the Kremlin reiterated his accusations of “genocide” orchestrated by Kiev in the pro-Russian separatist “republics” of Donbass, cited a call for help from the separatists and denounced the “aggressive” policy of NATO .
More than 150,000 Russian soldiers had nevertheless been massed at the gates of Ukraine for days.
Vladimir Putin warned Westerners “who would try to interfere”, that “Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead to consequences you have never experienced before”.
Protests against the war took place Thursday in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities.
More than 1,700 people have been arrested across the country, according to an NGO, after Russian authorities banned such demonstrations.
Other rallies were held in several cities around the world.
The United States and Albania called for a UN Security Council vote at 8:00 p.m. GMT on Friday on a draft resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine and calling on Russia to withdraw its troops immediately. .