Kyiv, Ukraine — Russia fired new rockets into Kyiv on Tuesday amid heavy fighting on the outskirts of the city as a delegation of European heads of state traveled to the war-torn Ukrainian capital to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
One rocket destroyed a building linked to a weapons manufacturer in downtown Kyiv with a pre-dawn strike, shattering the windows of buildings within a one-block radius. Separately, two apartment buildings were damaged, in one of them a fire broke out.
Two residents died and dozens were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment for smoke inhalation. According to official figures, there were no deaths at the weapons facility.
With Russian troops approaching the city limits, the mayor of Kyiv said he was imposing a 36-hour curfew from Tuesday evening. Heavy artillery shelling rocked the city again early Tuesday morning, and a nighttime firefight lit up the western horizon with tracer bullets.
On Tuesday, a woman was rescued from a shelled residential building in Kyiv.
Photo: THOMAS PETER/REUTERS
Another survivor of shelling in Kyiv on Wednesday received hugs after being dragged from an apartment building.
Photo: THOMAS PETER/REUTERS
The Polish government has said that a delegation of Central European leaders coming to Kyiv – all from NATO countries – plan to offer Ukraine a broad support package. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa were to meet with Mr Zelensky and Prime Minister Denis Shmygal as representatives of the Council of Europe.
The European Union has also agreed a fourth round of sanctions against Russia, including a broad ban on investment in the energy sector and expensive luxury goods, as well as new targeted sanctions against Russian business leaders and oligarchs, diplomats said.
The nighttime attacks came as Russian and Ukrainian negotiators prepared for new talks, which were suspended on Monday.
A woman, identified as a Russian state television employee, interrupted the live broadcast while waving a banner against the war in Ukraine; attacks on Kiev are intensifying, hitting trams and residential areas; some EU leaders are traveling to Kyiv as diplomatic efforts continue. Photo: Reuters
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said earlier that Ukrainian negotiators would focus on achieving a ceasefire, the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops, and security guarantees for the country. “The negotiations have been put on a technical pause until tomorrow,” Mr. Podolyak wrote on Twitter. “Negotiations are ongoing.”
Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who heads the Russian delegation at the talks, said talks with the Ukrainian side would continue “every day, seven days a week” via videoconference, he wrote on his Telegram channel following the talks on Monday. He said the format saved time and money.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that “the work is difficult,” but the fact that negotiations are ongoing is a positive thing.
Twenty days after the start of the war, Russia seized territory in southern Ukraine but was halted around Kyiv and elsewhere. His forces are increasingly resorting to bombing residential areas and civilian infrastructure to break Ukrainian resistance. The death toll from a rocket attack on the western city of Rovno rose to 19 on Monday, the local military administration said.
Territories no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
Direction of the invasion force
Controlled by or allied with Russia
Major border crossings with refugees
Chernobyl
Does not work
territory of Ukraine recognized by Putin as independent
controlled
separatists
Territories no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
Direction of the invasion force
Controlled by or allied with Russia
territory of Ukraine recognized by Putin as independent
Major border crossings with refugees
Chernobyl
Does not work
controlled
separatists
Territories no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
Direction of the invasion force
Controlled by or allied with Russia
Major border crossings with refugees
territory of Ukraine recognized by Putin as independent
Chernobyl
Does not work
controlled
separatists
Territories no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
Direction of the invasion force
Controlled by or allied with Russia
Major border crossings with refugees
territory of Ukraine recognized by Putin as independent
Territories no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
Direction of the invasion force
Controlled by or allied with Russia
Major border crossings with refugees
territory of Ukraine recognized by Putin as independent
The Ukrainian military also said it spotted a Russian reconnaissance drone crossing the border into neighboring Poland. The drone was shot down by a Ukrainian air defense system after it returned to Ukrainian airspace, the Air Force said the night before.
The drone appeared to be watching a Ukrainian military training center near the Polish border, which was hit by Russian rockets on Sunday, killing at least 35 people.
This was the last time in recent days that a drone from a war zone entered the airspace of a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Romania said it was investigating the drone crash on its soil. Another drone, believed to be of Ukrainian origin, crashed a few days earlier in Croatia, prompting the local government to ask the French military to conduct an observation flight over its airspace. According to the French military, this flight showed nothing suspicious.
Officials warn that civilian casualties are likely to rise sharply as fighting moves further into cities from outlying suburbs and Russian heavy weaponry rains down on buildings to destroy Ukrainian resistance.
A still from a footage released on Monday by the Ukrainian Azov Battalion shows destruction in the southeastern city of Mariupol.
Photo: /Associated Press
Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk said on Tuesday it was planned to evacuate civilians along nine humanitarian corridors, including a humanitarian aid convoy heading for the besieged port city of Mariupol.
National police said on Monday Russian forces fired mortars at a convoy of buses evacuating civilians from Gostomel, northwest of Kyiv. As a result of the shelling, the driver of one of the buses was wounded, and a woman who was driving in a civilian car died. The rest made it to safety.
According to the UN, the number of people fleeing the fighting in Ukraine now stands at about 3 million people.
Mr. Zelensky is due to deliver a virtual address to members of Congress on Wednesday. The Ukrainian president called on Western allies for more help, and many US lawmakers have demanded further action from the Biden administration.
On Monday, Odessans used sandbags to reinforce the defenses of the Ukrainian port city.
Photo: NACHO DOCE/REUTERS
The municipal services of the Obolonsky district of Kyiv on Monday took out a car that had been damaged as a result of the shelling.
Photo: Maxim Marusenko/Zuma Press
The White House is discussing a possible trip for Mr. Biden to Europe in the coming weeks, people familiar with the matter said Monday.
Weapons supplied to Ukraine by the US and its European allies, especially anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, played an important role in holding back the advance of Russian ground forces, which had suffered heavy losses in the north trying to encircle Kyiv.
Early on Tuesday morning local time, Mr. Zelensky, citing heavy casualties, called on Russian troops to stop fighting. “If you surrender to our troops, we will treat you the way people are supposed to be treated. As people, well. In a sense, you were not treated in your army,” the statement said.
He thanked those Russians who voiced their opposition to the war, singling out an anti-war protester who ran onto the set of the evening news program on Russia’s leading state-owned Channel One on Monday with a banner that read, “No to war. Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. Here you are being lied to. Russians against the war. She screamed “Stop the war, no war” before the camera cut off.
The Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday said its forces had seized a “citadel of nationalists and foreign mercenaries” north of Kyiv, capturing 10 Javelin missile systems and other weapons supplied by Western countries to Ukraine.
Russia’s ground offensives around Kyiv and the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv appear to have reached a stalemate as Moscow’s forces switch to striking civilian infrastructure and residential areas from afar. In the south, Russia has made faster progress, helped by its former military presence in the Crimean peninsula it annexed in 2014 and more favorable terrain.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it had taken control of the entire Kherson region in southern Ukraine.
— Georgy Kanchev contributed to this article.
A woman wept as she was evacuated Monday in Brovary, on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Photo: MARKO DŽURIKA/REUTERS
Write to Alan Callison at [email protected] and Isabel Coles at [email protected]
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