Ukraine | Fighting in Kiev, nearly 200 civilians killed since the invasion

(Kiev) Kiev is on Saturday under missile fire from Moscow and fighting is taking place in the city, where the Ukrainian president is calling on his people to take up arms against the Russian invasion which, according to Ukraine, killed nearly 200 people. civilians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed to have “broken the plan” for the Russian invasion and called for the defense of the capital Kiev, which has become more than ever the main target of Moscow’s forces.

For its part, the Kremlin on Saturday accused Ukraine of having aborted a truce by refusing negotiations.

“Yesterday in the day [vendredi], expecting negotiations, the Russian president ordered a halt to the advance of the main forces” from Moscow, said the spokesman for the presidency, Dmitry Peskov. “Since the Ukrainian side refused negotiations, the advance of Russian forces resumed today,” he added.

On the third day of the offensive launched by Vladimir Putin, at least 198 Ukrainian civilians, including three children, were killed and 1,115 people injured in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian Health Minister Viktor Liashko.

“We held our ground and successfully repelled enemy attacks […]. It is our army that controls Kiev and key towns around the capital,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Twitter, calling on people to take up arms and vowing to stay in Kiev.

Washington has accused Moscow of wanting to take control of Kiev to “decapitate the government” of Ukraine and instead install a power that is favorable to it.

Mr. Zelensky assured that “weapons and equipment of [ses] partners are on their way to Ukraine”, referring to an “anti-war coalition [qui] works” after a conversation with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron. “War has returned to Europe” and it “will last”, judged the latter.

The Dutch Ministry of Defense has indicated that it will deliver 200 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine “as soon as possible”. Prague, for its part, said it was donating weapons worth 7.6 million euros to Ukraine.

Clashes in Kyiv

In Kiev, a ghost town deserted by its inhabitants, fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces takes place on Victory Avenue, one of the main arteries of the capital.

Anyone on the street between 5 p.m. and 8 a.m. will be treated as an enemy, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has announced.

Ukrainian soldiers on patrol assured AFP that Russian forces were in a firing position a few kilometers away. Under a blue sky, the wreckage of a military truck pulverized by a missile still smokes among the debris, while detonations were heard in the distance.

The Kiev metro is at a standstill and now serves as an anti-aircraft “refuge” for residents, Klitschko announced on Telegram.

A large residential building was hit by a missile attack on Saturday morning, according to Ukrainian authorities, who did not immediately give an assessment.

The night was “difficult”, according to the mayor, who assured that “sabotage units” from Moscow are in the city, but not yet regular units of the Russian army.

The Ukrainian army posted on Facebook that it destroyed a column of five military vehicles, including a tank, on Victory Avenue in Kiev. Overnight, authorities reported a Russian attack on a power plant in the Troieshchyna district, northeast of Kiev.

So far, the Russian Ministry of Defense has not mentioned an offensive on Kiev, citing only the firing of cruise missiles on military infrastructure, advances in the East – where the army is supporting the separatists in the territories of Donetsk and Lugansk – and in southern Ukraine, where Russian forces entered Thursday from the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Exodus

Russian units have been identified in Borodianki (70 km northwest of Kiev) in Butcha, in the northwestern suburbs of the capital, and in Vyshgorod, in its northern suburbs, the Ukrainian army said on Facebook.

Russian forces “continue their attack to block Kiev from the North-East [du pays]but they were arrested by the Ukrainian armed forces,” she said.

Across the country, dozens of Ukrainian soldiers have lost their lives in the fighting, according to the Ukrainian army, which also claims to inflict heavy losses on the Russian army. Moscow does not give any information about its balance sheet.

On the road between Kramatorsk and Dnipro, two cities in eastern Ukraine, AFP journalists noted the presence of a large number of Ukrainian military convoys. Military checkpoints have been set up at the entrances and exits of each major city in this area.

Poland says 100,000 Ukrainians have crossed the Polish border since Thursday. Nine reception centers have been set up.

“We left our house very, very quickly because we were afraid of a massive attack,” Dania told AFP, among the refugees.

A total of more than 116,000 have fled to neighboring countries – such as Hungary, Moldova, Slovakia and Romania – a “growing” number, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees tweeted on Saturday ( UNHCR).

Rebellion

On Friday, Russia blocked at the UN Security Council, of which it is a permanent member, a resolution deploring its “aggression against Ukraine” and calling on it to immediately withdraw its troops. The text was supported by 11 of the 15 countries sitting on it.

Vladimir Putin seems determined to continue his offensive, until dislodging from power in Kiev those whom he qualifies as “drug addicts” and “neo-Nazis”. He also called on the Ukrainian army for a military coup.

According to Moscow, it is a “special military operation” for “peacekeeping” in order to “demilitarize” and “denazify” a country accused of an alleged genocide of the Russian-speaking populations of the East.

The Russian media regulator ordered national media on Saturday to remove from their content any reference to civilians killed by the Russian army in Ukraine as well as the terms “invasion”, “offensive” or “declaration of war “.

Mr. Zelensky, in a video, for his part urged the Russians to demand an end to the war from the Kremlin.

NATO, whose leaders met by videoconference on Friday, has repeated in recent days that it will not send troops to this country, but the member countries have decided to deploy additional troops in Europe, in particular in the countries from the east.

Penalties

The Ukrainian president on Saturday called on Berlin and Budapest to approve the exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT interbank system, a sanction considered as the “economic nuclear weapon” and examined by the European Union (EU).

The head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kouleba had earlier called on the West to “completely isolate Russia” and “destroy its economy”.

The Western camp is focused on toughening sanctions on Russia after it restricted its access to financial markets and technology.

Westerners, Washington in the lead, took a new step on Friday by imposing – a rare and symbolic fact – sanctions on Vladimir Putin himself and on his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

A commercial ship, suspected of belonging to a Russian company targeted by EU sanctions, has been intercepted in the English Channel, French authorities have announced.

Russia, for its part, announced the closure of its airspace to planes coming from Bulgaria, Poland or the Czech Republic in retaliation for a similar measure taken by these countries.