KHARKIV | Russia continues Wednesday its offensive on the Ukrainian cities, in particular on Kharkiv with sending of airborne troops and bombings, while evoking a resumption of the talks with a Ukrainian delegation.
• Read also: [EN DIRECT] 7th day of war in Ukraine: here are all the developments
• Read also: If Putin doesn’t back down, what do we do?
• Read also: Four things to know about sanctions against Russia
On the seventh day of the invasion launched by Vladimir Putin, Russian airborne troops landed in Kharkiv, the country’s second city, the Ukrainian army announced at dawn, without giving an idea of their number.
After several bombings in the city center on Tuesday which killed at least 21 people according to the regional governor, strikes hit the regional headquarters of the security and police forces on Wednesday morning as well as the university of this metropolis located 50 km from the Russian border, according to the emergency services, which reported at least four dead and nine wounded.
AFP
The police headquarters was bombed.
“There is no longer an area in Kharkiv where an artillery shell has not yet struck,” said Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Ukrainian Minister of the Interior.
In the capital Kyiv, some 500 km further west, where residents who have not fled have been preparing for an assault for days, relative calm reigns on Wednesday, after strikes the day before on the television tower, which killed five people.
Men in military uniform wrapped the bodies – apparently four family members and a state television reporter – to take them to the morgue, AFP found.
“This tower is our symbol of truth, free information, real news, it is our truth that they want to attack,” said lawyer-turned-volunteer fighter Volodymyr Roudenko.
The tower dominates the district of the Babi Yar memorial park, where more than 33,000 Jews were slaughtered in 1941, under the Nazi occupation.
If no monument in tribute to the victims of this massacre was touched, President Volodymyr Zelensky, the first Ukrainian Jewish president, accused Moscow of seeking to “erase” Ukraine and called on the Jews “not to remain silent”.
AFP
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“They have orders to erase our history, erase our country, erase us all,” he said in a new video on Wednesday.
Photos from the American satellite imagery company Maxar released overnight from Monday to Tuesday showed a long Russian convoy advancing towards the capital. A Pentagon official, however, said that its progress towards the capital, which normally has some three million inhabitants, seemed “at a standstill”, citing problems with the supply of food and fuel.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense also indicated in the night that it feared an offensive from Belarus, in the north.
The mayor of Kyiv, ex-boxer Vitaly Klitschko, reported fighting in the city’s suburbs and called on “all residents of Kyiv to show resilience (…) Kyiv is holding and will hold.”
In the south of the country, on the Sea of Azov, the Russian army said it had taken “total control” of the city of Kherson. Shortly before, its mayor, Igor Kolykhaiev, nevertheless ensured that the city remained under Ukrainian control.
In Mariupol, further east, more than a hundred people were injured on Tuesday in Russian fire, according to the town hall.
Control of this port is key for the Russian army, in order to ensure territorial continuity between its forces from Crimea and those from the separatist territories of Donbass. The two groups joined forces on Tuesday, according to Moscow.
In this context of generalized offensive, the spokesman of the Kremlin announced that a Russian delegation would wait Wednesday evening in an unspecified place “the Ukrainian negotiators”.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba meanwhile said that no date had been agreed. “It is not known when the talks will take place,” he said, accusing Russia of issuing “ultimatums”.
Initial negotiations Monday had remained without tangible result Monday, while Kiev claims the immediate stop of the Russian invasion when Moscow suggests wanting a surrender.
Putin “isolated as never”
The strikes on Kharkiv and Kiev testify to the intensification of a Russian offensive which has united the West but also revived the nuclear threat.
US President Joe Biden said overnight that Vladimir Putin was now “more isolated than ever from the rest of the world”.
He said the Kremlin “dictator” was wrong to “think that the West and NATO would not respond” to this invasion. “The democracies are there”, “we are united”, he hammered during his first speech on the state of the Union in Washington.
But Vladimir Putin seems determined to continue his offensive, despite growing international pressure and historic economic sanctions.
Among the unprecedented measures, some Russian banks have already been excluded from the Swift messaging system, a key cog in international finance. The measure prompted the main European subsidiary of Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, to file for bankruptcy, the EU banking regulator said on Wednesday.
American payment card issuers Visa, MasterCard and American Express announced on Tuesday that they had taken measures to prevent Russian banks from using their network.
And several giants of the American economy, from ExxonMobil to Apple via Boeing and Ford, announced Tuesday to distance themselves from Russia.
Joe Biden has also announced the banning of the airspace of the United States to Russian planes, a measure already announced by the European Union and Canada.
“Russia’s economy has been hit hard, but there is resilience, potential, we have plans,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Gas and oil at the highest
The consequence of these tensions: extremely shaken and volatile financial markets.
Oil and gas prices, of which Russia is one of the world’s main suppliers, continued to soar on Wednesday. The barrel of Brent exceeded 110 dollars for the first time since 2014, just before a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+). And the European reference price for natural gas, the Dutch TTF, reached a historic high of 194,715 euros per megawatt hour (MWh).
Ditto for wheat and corn, at a record level in Europe.
In addition to economic sanctions, Russia has been excluded from a multitude of sporting and cultural events, from the 2022 World Cup to the Davis Cup in tennis, including the Cannes Film Festival.
Throughout the world, demonstrations and actions of solidarity with Ukraine are increasing.
Even in Russia, some defy the prohibition of the authorities to demonstrate against the war. From his prison, opponent Alexeï Navalny called on his fellow citizens to demonstrate every day, calling Putin a “completely crazy little tsar”.
836,000 people on the run
After almost a week of conflict, more and more Ukrainians are fleeing.
Since the start of the invasion on February 24, more than 836,000 people have gone abroad, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said on Wednesday.
They mainly flee from the west, notably via Lviv, towards Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, all member countries of the EU and NATO.
But thousands, coming in particular from the large port of Odessa, on the Black Sea, also flock to the Moldovan border, noted AFP.
The World Bank has announced three billion dollars in emergency aid for Ukraine. At least 350 million could be released this week.