Russian forces on Wednesday continued their offensive on several cities in Ukraine, notably in Kharkiv, with the dispatch of airborne troops and bombardments, while the Ukrainian president accused Moscow of wanting to “erase” Ukraine.
While giving no sign of wanting to reduce its attacks, the Kremlin said it was ready to resume talks with the Ukrainians on Wednesday evening, after a first round without any real progress on February 28. Russia continues to demand the total demilitarization of Ukraine, considered a threat as an ally of the West, while Kiev rules out any capitulation.
On the seventh day of the invasion launched by Vladimir Putin, Russian airborne troops landed in Kharkiv, the Ukrainian army announced at dawn, without giving an idea of their number.
After several bombardments Tuesday in the city center, which had killed at least 21 people, according to the regional governor, new strikes hit the regional headquarters of the security and police forces on Wednesday morning, as well as the university, according to the services of ’emergency.
At least three people were injured, according to an initial report.
“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 Kiev, some 500 km further west, where residents who did not flee had been preparing for an assault for days, relative calm reigned after a strike the day before on the television tower, which left five dead.
Men in military uniform wrapped the bodies of those killed, to take them to the morgue, AFP noted.
The tower sits on the sprawling Babi Yar Memorial Park, where the bodies of more than 33,000 Holocaust victims rest.
While no monument to the victims of this massacre was touched on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday accused Moscow of seeking to “erase” Ukraine and its history, and called on Jews “not to remain silent” .
“They have orders to erase our history, erase our country, erase us all,” he said in a new video.
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, indicated that the movement on the capital, strong in normal times of some three million inhabitants, seemed “at a standstill”, citing problems with the supply of food and fuel.
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, even if the Russians were at the port and at the station.
In Mariupol, further east, more than a hundred people were injured on Tuesday in Russian fire, according to the mayor, Vadim Boitchenko.
Control of this port is key for the Russian army to maintain “territorial continuity” between Russian forces from Crimea and those from the separatist territories of Donbass, which according to Moscow were able to join on Tuesday.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense also indicated in the night that it feared an offensive from Belarus, in the north, after having noted “significant activity” of planes in the border area, and convoys of vehicles carrying food and ammunition there. were observed.
Poutine isolated as ever
The strikes on Kharkiv and Kiev – witnesses of the intensification of a Russian offensive which has united the West but also revived the nuclear threat – have aroused great emotion throughout the world.
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 in his first State of the Union speech in Washington.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest judicial body of the United Nations, seized by the Ukrainian government which accuses Moscow of planning a genocide, has announced hearings on March 7 and 8.
But Vladimir Putin seems determined to continue his offensive, despite increasingly strong 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 pushed the main European subsidiary of Sberbank, Russia’s top bank, to file for bankruptcy, according to the EU banking regulator.
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 on Tuesday that they were distancing 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.
Oil at 110 dollars
The consequence of these tensions: extremely shaken and volatile financial markets. Energy prices, of which Russia is one of the main world suppliers, continued to soar on Wednesday.
The barrel of Brent exceeded 110 dollars for the first time since 2014, before the meeting in the day of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC +).
Ditto for wheat and corn prices, at a record level in Europe.
In addition to economic sanctions and demonstrations of solidarity with Ukraine around the world, Russia has been excluded from a multitude of sporting and cultural events, from the 2022 Football World Cup to the Davis Cup in tennis, including the Cannes film festival.
The exodus of Ukrainians, especially towards bordering countries members of the EU and NATO, but also Moldova, continues.
Since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, a million people have been displaced within Ukraine itself and more than 677,000 have moved abroad, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Long queues of cars were waiting in particular at the Polish border, parts of Lviv, a metropolis in western Ukraine that had become an exit door and a center of retreat for Ukrainians as well as for Western embassies.
Thousands of residents of southern Ukraine, including the major port of Odessa on the Black Sea, also flocked to the Moldovan border, AFP noted.
The World Bank has announced three billion dollars in emergency aid for Ukraine. At least 350 million could be released this week.