Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Russia on Monday unleashed a series of attacks on Ukrainian rail and fuel facilities, hitting vital infrastructure far from the frontline of its eastern offensive that Britain said has yet to make a significant breakthrough.
Meanwhile, two fires were reported at oil facilities in western Russia. What caused the flames was unclear.
As both sides in the two-month-old war prepare for a potentially bitter attrition in the country’s eastern industrial heartland, senior US officials pledged more aid to ensure Ukraine prevails.
At a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Sunday, US secretaries of state and defense said Washington had approved a $165 million sale of ammunition for Ukraine’s war effort and more than $300 million in foreign military financing.
“The strategy we have put in place – massive support for Ukraine, massive pressure on Russia, solidarity with more than 30 countries participating in this effort – is showing real results,” Blinken told reporters in Poland the day after the meeting .
“When it comes to Russia’s war aims, Russia fails. Ukraine is successful,” he added.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba welcomed American support but said that “as long as Russian soldiers set foot on Ukrainian soil, nothing is enough”.
Kuleba warned that if the Western powers want Ukraine to win the war and “stop Putin in Ukraine and not allow him to go further, deeper into Europe, countries should speed up the delivery of weapons requested by Ukraine.”
Speaking to senior officials at the Attorney General’s Office on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US and its allies have tried and failed to “divide Russian society and destroy Russia from within.”
When Russia invaded on February 24, its obvious goal was a lightning offensive that would quickly take the capital and perhaps even overthrow the government. But the Ukrainians, backed by Western arms, pinned down Putin’s troops and thwarted their advance on Kyiv.
Moscow is now focused on the eastern region of the Donbass, although a senior military official said it also wants to control southern Ukraine. While both sides have said the campaign has started in the east, it has yet to gain momentum.
A small group of Ukrainian troops holed up at a steel mill in the strategic city of Mariupol is tying down Russian forces and preventing them from going on the offensive elsewhere in the Donbass, Britain’s Defense Ministry said on Monday.
Over the weekend, Russian forces launched fresh airstrikes on the steelworks to evict the estimated 2,000 fighters inside. About 1,000 civilians have also found shelter at the steelworks and the Russian military has pledged to open a humanitarian corridor on Monday to allow them to leave.
The Russian offer was met with skepticism by Ukraine. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on the Telegram messaging app that Ukraine did not consider the route safe, adding that Russia had previously broken agreements on similar evacuation routes. She called on the United Nations to monitor an evacuation.
Due to its strategic location on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol has endured heavy fighting since the beginning of the war. Besides liberating Russian troops, its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
On Monday, Russia concentrated its firepower elsewhere, with missiles and warplanes hitting far behind the front lines in the eastern Donbass region.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, the head of the state-owned Ukrainian Railways, said five railway facilities in central and western Ukraine were hit early Monday, including a rocket attack near the western city of Lviv.
Ukrainian authorities said at least five people were killed by Russian attacks in the central Vynnytsia region. Regional prosecutors said another 18 people were injured.
Russia also destroyed an oil refinery in Kremenchuk in central Ukraine, along with fuel storage facilities there, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Monday. In all, Russian warplanes destroyed 56 Ukrainian targets overnight, he said.
Phillips P. O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, said the war was settling into a campaign of escalating losses and gains on the battlefield for the time being.
“The two sides weaken each other every day,” he said. “So it’s about what can you bring in new, but what can you destroy on the other side?”
Meanwhile, a major fire broke out early Monday at an oil depot in a Russian town about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Ukrainian border, Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said. A cause for the fire was not given. Photos from the scene showed a huge plume of smoke billowing into the sky.
The Bryansk oil depot is owned by a subsidiary of the state-controlled Russian company Transneft, which operates the Druzhba pipeline, which transports crude oil west to other European countries. The ministry said in a statement that the huge fire damaged a diesel fuel depot. It determined that the region has enough diesel for 15 days.
It wasn’t clear if the depot was part of the pipeline infrastructure, but Polish pipeline operator PERN said deliveries to Poland were unaffected.
A Russian news report said another oil storage facility in Bryansk also caught fire early Monday, and the cause was not immediately known.
Last month, two Ukrainian attack helicopters struck an oil reservoir in Russia’s Belgorod region, which lies on the Ukrainian border, causing a fire.
In a video address on Monday, Zelenskyi described his meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as “encouraging and, most importantly, effective.”
The Ukrainian leader added that agreement had been reached on “further steps to strengthen Ukraine’s armed forces and to meet all the priority needs of our army.” He previously praised US President Joe Biden for his “personal support”.
The three-hour meeting took place on Sunday, the 60th day since the invasion began, as Ukraine urged the West for more powerful weapons against Russia’s campaign in Donbass, where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some areas before the war.
As the focus shifts to Russia, Austin said, Ukraine’s military needs are changing, and Zelenskyy is now focusing on more tanks, artillery and other ammunition.
When asked what the US considers a success, Austin said: “We want Ukraine to remain a sovereign country, a democratic country capable of protecting its sovereign territory, we want Russia to a weakened to the point where it can no longer invade Ukraine with such things.”
As Blinken and Austin left Ukraine, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was scheduled to travel to Turkey on Monday, and then to Moscow and Kyiv. Zelenskyy criticized Guterres for his visit to Russia ahead of Ukraine.
Blinken said he spoke to Guterres on the Friday before the trip.
“We expect that he will deliver a very strong and clear message to Vladimir Putin, which is the need to end this war now,” he said.
In a boost for Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron easily won a second term on Sunday against far-right challenger Marine Le Pen, who had promised to dilute France’s ties with the European Union and NATO. Le Pen had also opposed EU sanctions on Russian energy and had come under scrutiny during the campaign for her past friendliness with the Kremlin.
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Associated Press journalists Yuras Karmanau and Jon Gambrell in Lviv, Ukraine, and AP staff around the world contributed.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine