Civilians attempting to escape Ukraine’s major cities were attacked by Russian forces over the weekend.
The Washington Post reports:
The newest attacks by Russian warplanes, missiles and artillery came as waves of refugees continued to pour across Ukraine’s western border. In Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, at least eight people, including two children, were killed in an artillery barrage as families were preparing to board buses to flee the area.
For the second consecutive day, Russian shelling ruptured a temporary cease-fire in Mariupol, blocking efforts to evacuate civilians in the Black Sea city where more than 200,000 residents remained trapped, according to a tally by relief agencies.
“We’ve seen very credible reports of deliberate attacks on civilians, which would constitute a war crime,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on CNN on Sunday.
Mirella Hodeib, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said “the situation in Mariupol is desperate.”
“People are now in their 10th day without water, without electricity, living in shelters, shelters are packed. The essentials are missing, a lot of healthcare needs as well,” she explained.
It’s a similarly dire situation in Volnovakha, a small city in Ukraine’s southeast. A man who escaped from Volnovakha said hundreds of refugees are huddled in squalid conditions, fearful of constant Russian shelling.
“People are sick. There is no toilet. Girls and women use a bucket for toilet and they take it out when there is no shelling,” he said.
Russian forces are also attacking Mykolaiv, a city of 475,000 that plays a big role in Ukraine’s shipping industry.
The New York Times reports:
For three days, Russian forces had fought to take Mykolaiv, but by Sunday, Ukrainian troops had driven them back from the city limits and retaken the airport, halting the Russian advance along the Black Sea, at least temporarily. By Monday morning Russian forces had resumed their attack.
“Few expected such strength from our people because, when you haven’t slept for three days, and when you only have one dry ration because the rest burned up, when it’s negative temperature out and there is nothing to warm you, and when you are constantly in the fight, believe me, it is physically very difficult,” an exhausted Col. Sviatoslav Stetsenko, of the Ukrainian Army’s 59th Brigade, said in an interview. “But our people endured this.”
Taking Mykolaiv remains a key objective for Russian forces, and the thwomp of artillery in the distance on Sunday suggested that the Ukrainians had not pushed them back that far.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned the world that Russia would likely launch an aerial attack on Odesa in the coming days, a coastal city of 1 million.
“Russians always traveled to Odesa, always felt only warmth in Odesa,” Zelensky said. “And now what? Bombs against Odesa? Artillery against Odesa? Rockets against Odesa? This will be a war crime.”
Zelensky added, “We will punish everyone who committed atrocities in this war. There will be no quiet place on this earth for you. Except for the grave.”
“The aggressor is not far from Odessa,” its mayor told The Washington Post, which reports on the city’s preparations:
Odessa, considered a cultural and tourism hub in Ukraine, is unrecognizable right now. The downtown’s cobblestone streets are lined with sandbag barricades and antitank metal hedgehogs. All restaurants are closed. Sirens are heard throughout the day, but they tend to pass without incident.
The U.K.’s Ministry or Defense released a report Sunday explaining that Russia has adopted increasingly brutal tactics because they have been frustrated by fierce resistance from Ukraine’s population.
The report said attacks on civilians populations are “an effort to break Ukrainian morale.”
“Russia has previously used similar tactics in Chechnya in 1999 and Syria in 2016, employing both air and ground-based munitions,” the report added.
More than 1.7 million refugees have left Ukraine in the past two weeks. Millions of additional Ukrainians are desperate to flee – the European Union estimates that the war will create 5 million refugees – but a ceasefire agreement to allow evacuations fell apart this weekend as Russia continued its relentless assault.
Russia said it would open six “humanitarian corridors” on Monday that would give refugees a protected path out of harm’s way. But at least three of those corridors lead to either Russia or its ally Belarus, a fact that Ukraine’s vice prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, called “unacceptable.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin for two hours on Sunday, called the proposed corridors “moral and political cynicism, which is unbearable to me.”
Delegations from Russia and Ukraine are scheduled to meet for a third round of talks on Monday, but there’s scant hope that an end to the war will be negotiated. Putin, whose rhetoric is frequently filled with distortions, lies, and misinformation has said they’ll be peace “only if Kyiv ceases hostilities.”
Russia reportedly wants Ukraine to give up its claim to Crimea and allow Russia to annex large parts of Eastern Ukraine.
But Russia has clearly underestimated Ukraine’s wherewithal and military capabilities. Zelensky has pledged to keep fighting, and on Monday renewed his appeal for Western nations to enforce a no-fly zone over his country. Absent that, Zelensky urged allies to provide fighter jets to Ukraine’s military.
The New York Times adds:
That the Ukrainian forces still exist and are able to mount a defense after 11 days of war is by itself a major feat. Most military analysts and even some Ukrainian generals predicted that if Russia mounted a full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s military, which is dwarfed by its counterpart by almost every measure, would not last more than a few days or even hours. But by taking advantage of their local knowledge, attacking lumbering Russian troop columns with small, lithe units and using Western military assistance like antitank grenades to maximum effect, Ukrainian forces have managed to slow, if not stop, the Russian advance.
“We fight them day and night; we don’t let them sleep,” said Maj. Gen. Dmitry Marchenko, the commander of forces defending Mykolaiv. “They get up in the morning disoriented, tired. Their moral psychological state is simply broken.”
