(Kyiv) In what may signal a significant tightening of Moscow’s war aims, the United States said Russian forces appeared to have halted, at least for now, their ground offensive aimed at capturing the capital, Kyiv, and focused more on taking control of Donbass, a region in the south-east of the country – a change the Kremlin seemed to confirm.
Updated yesterday at 8:29 p.m.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky again called on Russia to negotiate an end to the war, but made clear that Ukraine would not agree to cede any part of its territory in the name of peace.
“The territorial integrity of Ukraine must be guaranteed,” he said in an overnight video address to the nation. That is, the conditions must be fair, because the Ukrainian people will not accept them otherwise. »
“This is a barbaric war, and according to international conventions, deliberate attacks against civilians are war crimes,” said Mircea Geoana, NATO Deputy Secretary General.
He said Vladimir Putin’s efforts to break Ukraine’s will to resist are having the opposite effect: “What he gets in response is an even more determined Ukrainian army and an ever more united West for support Ukraine. »
As the Russians continue to bombard the capital from the air, they appear to have “hunkered down defensively” outside Kyiv and focus more on Donbass, the senior US defense official said, speaking under on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s assessment.
“They show no signs of wanting to move into Kyiv from the ground,” the official said.
In comments that seemed to corroborate a change in Moscow’s military objectives, Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoi, Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff, said that the main objective of the first stage of the operation – to reduce the Ukraine’s combat capability – has “generally been achieved”, allowing Russian forces to focus on “the main objective, the liberation of Donbass”.
Donbas is the largely Russian-speaking eastern part of the country, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 and where many residents want close ties with Moscow. Its coal and industrial regions of Donetsk and Luhansk are recognized by Russia as independent.
The British Ministry of Defense says Ukrainian forces have counterattacked and were able to reoccupy towns and defensive positions up to 35 kilometers east of Kyiv as Russian troops retreat to their supply lines too extensive. In the south, logistical problems and Ukrainian resistance are slowing the Russians as they seek to head west toward the port of Odessa, the ministry said.
In fact, the Russians no longer fully control Kherson, the first major city to fall to Moscow forces, a senior US defense official has said. The official said the southern town was under heavy fighting. The Kremlin denied losing full control of the city.
The Russian military said 1,351 of its soldiers died in Ukraine and 3,825 were injured, although it was not immediately clear whether this included separatists in the east or others not part of the ministry of Defense, like the National Guard. Earlier this week, NATO estimated that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian troops had been killed in four weeks of fighting.
For civilians, the misery is deepening in Ukrainian cities, which look more and more like the ruins that Russian forces left during their campaigns in Syria and Chechnya.
In the village of Yasnohorodka, about 50 kilometers west of Kyiv, Russian troops who were there earlier in the week appeared to have been pushed back as part of a counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces.
The village church tower was damaged by an explosion and the houses at the main crossroads are in ruins.
“You can see for yourself what happened here. People have been killed here. Our soldiers were killed here,” said Yasnohorodka resident Valeriy Puzakov.
As for Mariupol, “nothing remains of Mariupol,” said Evgeniy Sokyrko, who was among those waiting for an evacuation train at Zaporizhzhia, a bus station for refugees from the destroyed port city. “In the last week there have been explosions like I have never heard before. »
Oksana Abramova, 42, said she suffered for the people left behind in the city, who were cut off from communication with the bombardment of cellphone, radio and TV towers and cannot afford to s ‘escape.
“I think all the time about how they are, where they are. Are they still hiding, are they alive? Or maybe they’re gone,” she said.
The strike against the theater of Mariupol would have killed 300
Ukrainian authorities announced on Friday that around 300 people were killed when a Russian airstrike destroyed a theater in the ruined city of Mariupol where hundreds of civilians were sheltering – a catastrophic loss of civilian life which, if it is confirmed, is likely to further increase pressure on the West to step up military aid.
In a vain attempt to protect those inside the large columned theater from the missiles and airstrikes that Russia rained down on the cities, a huge sign reading “CHILDREN” in Russian had been posted at the exterior of the building and was visible from the air.
For days the government of the battered port city was unable to give the number of casualties from the March 16 attack. The post on his Telegram channel on Friday cited eyewitnesses. It was not immediately clear whether rescuers were finished searching the ruins of the theater or how witnesses arrived at the heavy toll.
Shortly after the attack, Ludmilla Denisova, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, said more than 1,300 people were inside, including several whose homes had been destroyed in the siege of the city by Russia. The building had a relatively modern bomb shelter in the basement, and some survivors emerged from the rubble after the attack.
In Kyiv, the ashes of the dead are piling up at the main crematorium because so many loved ones have left, leaving urns unclaimed. And the northern city of Chernihiv is nearly cut off after Russian forces destroyed bridges, leaving people without electricity, water and heat, authorities said.
For the vulnerable – the elderly, children and others unable to join millions of others heading west – food shortages are mounting in a country once known as the breadbasket of the world.
In relentlessly bombarded Kharkiv, hundreds of panicked people took refuge in the subway and in a hospital emergency room filled with wounded soldiers and civilians.
People, mostly elderly women, stoically lined up to collect food and other urgent supplies this week as explosions sounded in the distance. Shaking in anticipation, a young girl watched as a volunteer cut thick slices of cheese with a knife, one for each hungry person.
“Among those who stayed, there are people who can walk on their own, but many cannot walk, elderly people,” said Hanna Spitsyna. All these people need diapers, swaddling blankets and food. »
Help is coming, we promise
The new toll in Mariopoul came a day after US President Joe Biden and other leaders promised after a meeting in Brussels that more military aid for Ukraine was coming. But they did not provide the heavy weapons desired by President Zelensky. NATO countries fear that providing planes, tanks and other equipment that Mr. Zelensky urgently needs will increase the risk that they will be drawn into a direct conflict with Russia.
But the United States and the European Union have announced a decision to further increase the pressure on Russia: a new partnership to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian energy and slowly reduce the billions of dollars that the Kremlin derives from sales of fossil fuels.
Despite efforts to target the Russian economy to push the Kremlin to change course, the misery of civilians continues to worsen in cities that day by day look more and more like the ruins that Russian forces have left behind from previous campaigns in Syria and Chechnya.
Common values
At an emergency NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday, Zelensky pleaded with Western allies via video for planes, tanks, rockets, air defense systems and other weapons, saying his country “defended our common values”.
The invasion has heightened an energy and moral dilemma for European nations that heat their homes and power their industries with Russian hydrocarbons. Alarmed that the billions they pay could be channeled by the Kremlin towards its war effort, they are accelerating the search for alternatives.
Germany said on Friday it had struck deals with new suppliers that would significantly reduce its dependence on Russian coal, gas and oil in the coming weeks. Mr Biden explained that the new US-EU gas supply partnership will help undermine Russian President Vladimir Putin’s use of energy sales to ‘twist an arm and manipulate his neighbours’ and “running his war machine”. Under the plan, the United States and other countries will increase their liquefied natural gas exports to Europe by 15 billion cubic meters this year.