White House Director of Communications Kate Bedingfield told reporters on Tuesday that “no one should be fooled” by Russia’s claim that it would “drastically reduce military activity” against Kyiv and Chernihiv as peace talks played out. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Russian announcement was likely designed to “deceive people and deflect attention.”
Their comments, unfortunately, proved to be prophetic. On Wednesday, Ukrainian officials reported that “Russian shelling hit homes, shops, libraries and other ‘civilian infrastructure'” in Chernihiv and on the outskirts of the capital, according to The Associated Press.
“Today we’ve had a colossal mortar attack on the center of Chernihiv,” Mayor Vladyslav Atroshenko told CNN. “Twenty-five people have been wounded. They’re all civilians.”
“Chernihiv has been under near-constant attack,” reports The Washington Post, “with power cut and resources dwindling, in a situation that echoes the humanitarian crisis in the besieged city of Mariupol in the south.”
The dire situation extinguished all optimism deriving from yesterday’s peace talks in Istanbul, after which Russia pledged to curb its attacks on cities in northern Ukraine.
Many international observes sensed that Russia was bluffing or simply seizing an excuse to explain away its military failures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was also skeptical, saying in an address to his nation on Tuesday, “We can call those signals that we hear at the negotiations positive. But those signals don’t silence the explosions of Russian shells.”
On Wednesday, Russian officials also threw cold water on the idea of a peaceful resolution to the five-week invasion. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday dispelled the idea that Tuesday’s talks in Turkey between Ukrainian and Russian delegates had represented a turning point. “No one said that the sides have made headway,” he said. “We can’t point to anything particularly promising.”
The outlet reports on fighting elsewhere in the country:
The Ukrainian military early Wednesday said it had fought off four Russian advances in the Donetsk and Luhansk areas of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, which Moscow over the past few days has said it would prioritize in the fighting. It later added that Russia had intensified its assault in the direction of Donetsk, focused principally on winning control of the cities of Popasna, Rubizhne and Mariupol.
Russia continued its long-range strikes throughout the country, attacking what it characterized as military targets. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it destroyed Ukrainian military equipment and struck two large warehouses in the Donbas area with short-range ballistic missiles.
The AP adds:
An assessment from Britain’s Ministry of Defense said that Russia’s focus on the Donbas region “is likely a tacit admission that it is struggling to sustain more than one significant axis of advance.”
“Russian units suffering heavy losses have been forced to return to Belarus and Russia to reorganize and resupply,” the ministry said in a statement Wednesday. “Such activity is placing further pressure on Russia’s already strained logistics and demonstrates the difficulties Russia is having reorganizing its units in forward areas within Ukraine.”
