In Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, attacks on citizens are becoming deadlier and more violent. Two bombings in Kyiv and the shooting dead of Russian soldiers to disperse a demonstration in occupied Kherson on Monday show the toughness of the struggle amid deadlocked negotiations. Odessa in the south, a city long desired by Putin and Russian nationalism, has suffered its first attack, including against a residential area. In Mariupol, the city that has become a symbol of destruction and cruelty to civilians in this 26dayold war, Ukrainian troops refused to surrender to Sunday’s Moscow ultimatum. In Kharkov, the country’s second largest city, which was heavily bombed and almost surrounded by Putin’s troops, the Ukrainian government accused Moscow of hijacking a humanitarian convoy. The Kiev authorities also say that the Kremlin has launched a strategy to deport hundreds of citizens, including children, to Russia. Despite the evidence, the Kremlin maintains that it is not attacking civilian areas.
As the progress of the Russian offensive has stalled on multiple fronts, the Kremlin has ramped up its strategy of besieging and bombing civilians in a war of attrition. Eight people were killed in northern Kiev in an attack late Sunday, in which an explosion could be heard miles away. Dawn brought back the image of devastation as the curfew ended. The target of the attacks this time was the newly built Retroville shopping center. The gallery stands in one of the extensions in the north of the Ukrainian capital, not far from the area where the Ukrainian and Russian armies have been fighting over access to the capital for days. In the afternoon of this Monday, the fighting from the attacked area could still be heard in the distance.
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In the morning, the neighbors huddled as close as possible to the cordonedoff area around the attacked mall. “It was like an earthquake,” Victoria explained, making the detonation gesture with her hands that shook everyone in the neighborhood. “I was sitting on the sofa at home when everything was shaking and small pieces were falling out of the windows,” she added.
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Around the epicenter of the attack are some 15story blocks built a few years ago, with gardens in the middle. Many windows and glass were blown. Also shop windows. The damage was even several hundred meters from the massive explosion that hit the mall. Many of the posters of major international fashion, restaurant or DIY brands have been put up in this commercial area, which remains surrounded by security teams and members of the army this Monday.
Shortly thereafter, in an interview with TVE, the mayor of the capital, Vitali Klitschko, reported another attack in the city center, in which one person was killed and ten others injured. “We expect new attacks in the next 24 hours and our top priority is to protect the lives of citizens,” Klitschko said.
A few hours after the bomb attack, Kyiv has entered a new phase of lethargy imposed by the city council. The new curfew applies from Monday afternoon to Wednesday morning. You are not allowed to go out at night on any day. According to the authorities, the purpose of this measure, which was imposed on citizens for the third time since the war began on February 24, is to act more effectively against enemy groups allegedly infiltrated into the city.
First attack on Odessa
On the southern front, where Russian troops have advanced furthest, local authorities this Monday reported the first attack on the coastal city of Odessa, home to around a million people and a strategic Black Sea port, that the Kremlin wants to capture. Again, the targets were residential buildings, but the attack did not claim any lives. The city, which is strategically located for Moscow, has been shielding itself from the possibility of an impending invasion for weeks. The Kremlin troops, who stationed warships in the Black Sea before the historic city founded by Catherine the Great at the end of the 18th century, had already bombarded the coastal area and other points of the region, where even an amphibious landing is feared.
After weeks of intense fighting, Kyiv has lost control of the Sea of Azov, a key geostrategic element for the Kremlin, which is trying to unite the Crimean Peninsula, which it illegally annexed in 2014, with the territories of Donetsk Oblasts and Lugansk under its control by pro Russian separatists. Putin’s troops have taken over the port of Mariupol, the most important in Azov waters, and have already entered the strategic city, where they are fighting Ukrainian forces street by street and controlling three districts. The situation of the city is apocalyptic. Without light, without heating, almost without food, without drugs and with angry and constant attacks on the population. The city is still searching for survivors of the bombing of an art school where hundreds of civilians took refuge on Monday, and the attack on the city’s Dramatic Theater days earlier on Sunday, according to Ukrainian authorities who were still searching this Monday survivors.
The ultimatum given by Moscow on Sunday to the Ukrainian army to surrender their weapons and leave Mariupol has not come into force. The deadline expired at 5 a.m. Monday and Ukrainian authorities are refusing to abandon the city, as the Kremlin is demanding. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said this Monday that Ukraine would never bow to Russian ultimatums and that cities like Kyiv, Mariupol or Járkov would not accept the Russian occupation.
Kyiv also rejected Moscow’s offer to open two humanitarian corridors from Mariupol in exchange for surrender. Meanwhile, hundreds of people continue to try to flee the port city, where at least 2,300 civilians have died, according to local authorities. This Monday, the governor of the Zaporizhia region, Oleksandr Staruy, where most of the refugees from the besieged city and other towns under shelling in the southeast of the country arrive, assured that Russian forces have reached buses used to evacuate civilians from the front lines are areas and that four minors were injured.
The Ukrainian government also denounced that Moscow is deporting hundreds of people from Mariupol and other cities in the region to Russia against their will. Including hundreds of children from the Donbass region. Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said in a statement that 2,389 minors were separated from their parents in a single day, March 19.
Constant bombing in Kharkiv
Along with Mariupol, the cities in the east of the country that have suffered most from Russian tactics of destroying urban areas with artillery are Kharkov, Sumi and Chernihiv. Kharkov Mayor Igor Terekhov says many of the buildings that were reduced to rubble in the country’s second largest city were residential. “It can’t be said that we’ve put the worst of the days behind us; we are constantly being bombed; last night there was artillery fire again, Terekhov said.
Putin, who launched his “military special operation to “demilitarize and “denazify Ukraine nearly a month ago, has failed to capture one of the country’s major cities. And in many of the cities it has occupied, it has failed to change the landscape of a Ukrainian citizenry hostile to the invader, who have not greeted their perceived “liberators” with flowers, but instead engaged in peaceful demonstrations against it gathered the invasion. In Kherson, on the Black Sea and the largest city of those who could occupy it, this Monday they used live fire (stun grenades and shots) to suppress a protest against Kremlin troops, as denounced by Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who has assured for injuring a pensioner.
In Kherson, Russian war criminals opened fire on unarmed people peacefully protesting invaders. You can see a wounded pensioner. This is the ugly face of Russia, a shame for humanity. We must stop Russia! Sanction them, isolate them, hold war criminals accountable. pic.twitter.com/WeItSykD3q
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 21, 2022
In the west of the country, just 166 kilometers from Poland, several people were injured in a rocket attack on Ukrainian military installations in the Rivne region this Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry said and the city’s mayor Alexandr Tretiak confirmed, via his Telegram Account. “According to initial information, there are several injured. We will report in more detail later, the Rivne City Council explained in detail.
As the attacks continue, negotiating teams resumed talks this Monday. The delegates from Moscow and Kyiv spoke for 90 minutes via video conference in the morning. According to David Arayamia, the leader of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party in parliament, the plan was to hold talks throughout the day with the Russian delegation.
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