Kyiv, Ukraine – Russian forces accelerated isolated attacks on Kyiv, western Ukraine and beyond on Saturday in an explosive reminder to Ukrainians and their western backers that the whole country remains under threat despite Moscow’s focus on a new offensive in the east .
Disturbed by the loss of its Black Sea flagship and outraged by the alleged Ukrainian aggression on Russian territory, Russia’s military leadership had warned of renewed rocket attacks on the Ukrainian capital. Officials in Moscow said they were targeting military sites, a claim repeated and contradicted by witnesses throughout 52 days of the war.
The toll goes much deeper. Every day brings new discoveries of civilian casualties from an invasion that has shattered European security. As Russia prepared for the expected offensive, a mother wept over the body of her 15-year-old son after rockets hit a residential area of Kharkiv, a city in northeastern Ukraine. An infant and at least eight other people died, officials said.
In the Kyiv region, authorities have reported finding the bodies of more than 900 civilians, most of whom have been shot since Russian troops withdrew two weeks ago. Smoke rose again from the capital early Saturday when Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported a strike that killed one person and injured several.
The mayor advised residents who fled the city at the start of the war not to return.
“We are not ruling out further strikes in the capital,” said Klitschko. “If you have the opportunity to stay a little longer in the cities where it’s safer, do it.”
It was not immediately clear what was struck in the strike in Darnytskyi district of Kyiv. The sprawling area on the south-eastern edge of the capital contains a mix of Soviet-style apartment blocks, newer shopping malls and large retail outlets, industrial areas and railroad yards.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said an armored vehicle plant was attacked. He did not say where the factory was located, but there is one in the Darnytskyi district.
He said the facility is among several Ukrainian military sites hit with “long-range air-launched high-precision weapons.” As the US and Europe send new weapons to Ukraine, the strategy could aim to weaken Ukraine’s defenses against an expected all-out Russian attack in the east.
It was the second attack in the Kyiv region since the Russian military vowed this week to step up rocket attacks on the capital. Another hit a missile factory on Friday, as residents turned out for walks, foreign embassies were due to reopen and other timid signs of the city’s pre-war life resurfaced after Russian troops failed to capture Kyiv and retreated.
Kyiv was one of many goals on Saturday. The Office of the President of Ukraine reported rocket attacks and shelling in eight regions across the country in the past 24 hours.
The governor of the Lviv region in western Ukraine – long thought to be a safe zone – reported airstrikes on the region by Russian Su-35 planes, launched from neighboring Belarus.
In apparent preparations for its attack on the east, the Russian military has intensified shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in recent days. The attack on Friday killed civilians and injured more than 50 people, the Ukrainian president’s office said.
On Saturday, an explosion believed to be caused by a missile sent rescue workers near an outdoor market in Kharkiv, according to AP journalists at the scene. According to rescue workers, one person was killed and at least 18 people were injured.
“All windows, all furniture, everything destroyed. And the door too,” said the stunned resident Valentina Ulianova.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who met Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week – the first European leader to do so since the invasion began on February 24 – said the Russian president was “in his own logic of war” towards Ukraine.
In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Nehammer said he believed Putin believed he was winning the war and “we have to look him in the eye and confront him with what we’re seeing in Ukraine.”
Nehammer also said he confronted Putin about what he saw during a visit to the Kiev suburb of Bucha, where vivid evidence of killings and torture under Russian occupation emerged, and “it wasn’t a friendly conversation.”
In south-eastern Ukraine, the ailing port city of Mariupol is holding on to the south, but the situation is critical, the Ukrainian President’s Office said. Russian troops have maintained a blockade there since the early days of the invasion.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Saturday that Ukrainian forces have been driven out of most of the city and remain only at the huge Azovstal Steel Plant.
The capture of Mariupol would allow Russian forces in the south, advancing through the annexed Crimea peninsula, to ally themselves fully with troops in the Donbass region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.
The struggle for control of Mariupol comes with a terrible cost for the trapped and starving civilians. Locals reported that Russian troops had dug up bodies from courtyards and banned new burials. Why was unclear.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for more Western arms and a global embargo on Russian oil, and accused Russian troops of terrorizing civilians in occupied cities.
“The occupiers believe that this will make it easier for them to control this area. But they are very wrong. They are fooling themselves,” said Zelenskyy in his nightly video speech late on Friday. “Russia’s problem is that it is not accepted by the entire Ukrainian people – and will never be accepted. Russia has lost Ukraine forever.”
In an interview with CNN, he also warned that “all countries in the world” should be prepared for the possibility that Putin could use tactical nuclear weapons, a basic fear since the invasion began.
Zelenskyy estimates that 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in the war and around 10,000 were injured. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office said Saturday that at least 200 children were killed and more than 360 injured.
Russian forces have also captured around 700 Ukrainian soldiers and more than 1,000 civilians, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Saturday. Ukraine holds about the same number of Russian troops as prisoners and intends to arrange an exchange, but demands the release of civilians “unconditionally,” Vereshchuk said.
Russia’s warning of increased attacks on Kyiv came after Russian authorities on Thursday accused Ukraine of injuring seven people and damaging about 100 residential buildings in airstrikes in Bryansk, a region bordering Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials have not confirmed targets in Russia. However, they claimed responsibility for destroying a key warship with missiles earlier this week.
The Moskva sank Thursday after being badly damaged. Russia did not concede an attack, saying only that a fire detonated ammunition on board.
The sinking reduced Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea and appeared to symbolize Moscow’s fate in an eight-week invasion widely viewed as a historic blunder following Russia’s withdrawal from the Kyiv region and much of northern Ukraine.
After the withdrawal, bodies were left in the streets of cities around Kyiv or given temporary burials. Andriy Nebytov, who heads the region’s police force, cited police data showing that 95% died from gunshot wounds and said they were “simply executed in the streets”.
More bodies are being found under rubble and in mass graves every day, he added, with the largest number found in Bucha, more than 350.
The diplomatic rift between Russia and the West widened further on Saturday when Moscow barred British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and a dozen other senior British officials from entering the country in response to British sanctions.
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Chernov reported from Kharkiv. Yesica Fisch in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Robert Burns in Washington, and Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.
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