A military base near the Polish border in western Ukraine, hitherto relatively untouched by Russian strikes, was shelled overnight, killing at least 35 local authorities said on Sunday, while southern country continues to be shelled and Kiev fears an encirclement.
This military base is located in Yavoriv, about forty kilometers northwest of Lviv, where many displaced people have flocked, and about twenty kilometers from the border with Poland, a NATO member country. It has served in recent years as a training ground for Ukrainian forces under the supervision of foreign instructors, notably American and Canadian.
“Russia attacked the International Center for the Maintenance of Peace and Security. Foreign instructors work there,” said Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, without specifying whether they were present at the time of the strikes.
“This is yet another terrorist attack against peace and security near the EU-NATO border. We must act to stop this. Close the sky! he continued, repeating Kiev’s request to create an exclusion zone above Ukraine, which NATO refuses to do for fear of widening the conflict.
According to a new report from the governor of the region, Maxim Kozitsky, the strikes left 35 dead and 134 injured, after a previous report of nine dead and 57 injured.
“The airstrikes were carried out from the Black and Azov Seas. In total, the invaders fired more than 30 missiles. The Ukrainian air defense system worked. We shot down some of the missiles in the air,” he said.
In this region, strikes had already targeted a military airport in Lutsk on Saturday, killing four Ukrainian soldiers. On Sunday, the mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk, located about a hundred kilometers south of Lviv, said that a “strike” had targeted the airport early in the morning.
They target the people
At the same time, the Russian army continues to pound the south of the country where the besieged city of Mariupol hopes for the arrival of a convoy of humanitarian aid on Sunday.
This convoy remained blocked for more than five hours at a Russian checkpoint on Saturday.
The stakes are crucial for Mariupol: the strategic port city, located in the south-east of the country between Crimea and Donbass, is plunged into an “almost hopeless” situation according to Médecins sans frontières (MSF), lacking food and deprived water, gas, electricity and communications.
Turkey has called on Russia for help to evacuate its nationals stuck in the city, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu said on Sunday.
Attempts to evacuate hundreds of thousands of civilians have repeatedly failed. “Mariupol is still surrounded, what they cannot have through war, (the Russian soldiers) want to have through hunger and despair. As they cannot bring down the Ukrainian army, they are targeting the population,” analyzes a French military source.
Moscow recognizes that the situation “in some cities” has taken on “catastrophic proportions”, in the words of General Mikhail Mizintsev, quoted on Saturday by Russian news agencies. But the military accused Ukrainian “nationalists” of mining residential areas and destroying infrastructure.
Shelling in Mykolaiv
Still to the south, the metropolis of Odessa continues to prepare for an offensive by Russian troops, who are currently concentrating about a hundred kilometers to the east on Mykolaiv.
Nine people were killed in Russian strikes on the port city, the region’s government, Vitali Kim, said on Sunday. On Saturday, the strikes notably affected residential areas, including a cancer center and an eye hospital, according to an AFP journalist on the spot.
Victims litter the streets of some cities, and the tolls are impossible to verify. “About 1,300” Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the Russian invasion on February 24, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.
The Russian army has lost “about 12,000 men”, says the head of state.
Russia, for its part, announced on March 2 its one and only death toll of 498 soldiers.
At least 579 civilians have been killed, according to the United Nations tally on Saturday, which stresses that its tolls are probably much lower than the reality. And nearly 2.6 million people have fled Ukraine since February 24, in addition to around two million internally displaced people, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Kiev, whose only roads to the south remain clear, is increasingly surrounded by Russian soldiers, who destroyed the nearby airport of Vassylkiv on Saturday, according to the Ukrainians.
Present in the suburbs, the Russian troops are trying to neutralize the surrounding localities to “block” Kiev, according to the Ukrainian general staff, and the northwestern suburbs (Irpin, Boutcha) have been heavily bombarded in recent days.
In Irpin on Sunday morning, Ukrainian forces evacuated the bodies of three soldiers on stretchers by advancing on makeshift planks over a river near a demolished bridge while elderly people, some in tears, were evacuated by minibus to reach the capital, according to an AFP journalist.
According to Ukrainian soldiers interviewed by AFP in Irpin, Boutcha is now in Russian hands.
However, they are encountering resistance from the Ukrainian army, both west and east of the capital, AFP journalists noted.
Between “lies” and “signal”
Vladimir Putin also always displays his determination. On Saturday, the Russian president accused Ukrainian forces of “flagrant violations” of humanitarian law, during a telephone interview with French leaders Emmanuel Macron and German Olaf Scholz.
“Lies”, reacted the French presidency. And calls from MM. Macron and Scholz to an “immediate ceasefire” remained a dead letter.
However, on the diplomatic front, a shift may have emerged over the weekend: Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed a “fundamentally different approach” from Moscow in his recent talks with Kiev, noting that Russia no longer satisfied with “just giving ultimatums”.
Asked about statements made Friday by Vladimir Putin evoking “advances” in the Russian-Ukrainian talks, Mr. Zelensky said he was “happy to have a signal from Russia”, during a press conference in Kiev.
A meeting was held Thursday between the heads of Russian and Ukrainian diplomacy in Turkey, without result. Previously, three sessions of talks had been held at delegation level. Talks that will continue by videoconference, according to the Kremlin.
New American aid
The Westerners refuse to enter the conflict, but have multiplied economic and trade sanctions against Russia, and assured Kiev of particular military support.
Washington thus authorized Saturday a new aid in weapons of 200 million dollars, which follows a first aid in military equipment of 350 million dollars, of which two thirds were delivered to March 4, according to an official of the Pentagon.
The new announcement from the White House comes after statements by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who said he had “warned the United States” that these “convoys” were becoming “legitimate targets”, citing the systems of portable air defense and anti-tank missile systems.