(Kiev) Ukrainian forces said on Saturday that they had repelled a night “attack” by Russian soldiers against one of their positions on Victory Avenue, one of Kiev’s main arteries.
Posted at 6:56 a.m.
Updated at 9:52 p.m.
“The attack is repelled,” said the Ukrainian army, in a message on its Facebook account, without giving more details on the exact location of this confrontation.
She accompanied this message with a photo showing a large plume of smoke rising in the middle of an urban area, in the middle of the night, when Kiev fears a major attack by the Russian army to seize the city.
From the center of the capital, AFP journalists also heard fairly loud explosions very early on Saturday.
In a separate statement, the Ukrainian army reaffirmed that “hard fighting” continued in Vassylkiv, about thirty kilometers southwest of Kiev, where the Russians “are trying to land paratroopers”.
The capital threatened, had estimated Zelensky
The Russian army will “try to seize” Kiev overnight from Friday to Saturday, following the massive offensive launched 48 hours earlier against Ukraine on the orders of Vladimir Putin, had alerted a little more early President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“We cannot lose the capital. I address our defenders, men and women from all fronts: tonight the enemy will use all their forces to break through our defenses in the most vile, harsh and inhuman way. Tonight, they will try to seize” Kiev, he said in a video address broadcast on the website of the presidency.
“Our main objective is to put an end to this massacre. The enemy’s losses are very serious,” he added.
The first Russian military units entered the north of the Ukrainian capital on Friday, killing people there.
UKRAINIAN PRESIDENCY PHOTO VIA AFP
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
As a result of what could be the worst conflict in Europe since 1945, some 100,000 people have already been displaced and 50,000 have left Ukraine, the UN reported, where Russia vetoed the Security Council to a resolution deploring his “aggression”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday called on the European Union to tighten sanctions against Russia to punish it for its invasion of Ukraine.
“All possibilities of sanctions have not yet been exhausted. The pressure on Russia must increase. That’s what I said” to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Mr Zelensky said on Twitter.
On Thursday evening, the leaders of the 27 EU countries tightened sanctions against Russia, in the energy, finance and transport sectors, without going so far as to exclude it from the banking system. international Swift.
Kiev had urged Western countries to take this last measure, presented by experts as a financial “atomic weapon”, but also likely to harm European economic players.
Russia launched a major military offensive against Ukraine on Thursday after several weeks of escalating tensions. On Friday, fighting took place in particular in the capital Kiev.