Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – In what could signal an important curtailment of Moscow’s war goals, the US said Russian forces appear to have halted their ground offensive to capture the capital Kyiv, at least for now, and are focusing more on taking control of the Donbass region in the southeast of the country – a shift that the Kremlin appeared to confirm.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again appealed to Russia to negotiate an end to the war, but said clearly that Ukraine would not be ready to give up parts of its territory for the sake of peace.
“Ukraine’s territorial integrity should be guaranteed,” he said in a late-night video address to the nation. “That means the conditions must be fair, otherwise the Ukrainian people will not accept them.”
As the Russians continue to bomb the capital from the air, they appear to have settled into a “defensive crouch” outside of Kyiv and are more focused on the Donbass, said a senior US defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the order to discuss the Pentagon’s assessment.
“They are showing no signs of being ready to attack Kyiv from the ground,” the official said.
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In comments that appeared to confirm a change in Moscow’s military objectives, Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoy, deputy chief of the Russian General Staff, said the main objective of the first phase of the operation – reducing Ukraine’s combat capacity – “has been generally achieved,” which it is Allows Russian Armed Forces to focus on “the main objective, the liberation of Donbass”.
Donbass is the largely Russian-speaking eastern part of the country, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 and where many residents want close ties with Moscow. Its mining and industrial regions of Donetsk and Luhansk are recognized by Russia as independent.
A member of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Unit prepares to go to the front lines on Friday, March 25, 2022, in Yasnohorodka on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP Photo/ (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Britain’s MoD said Ukrainian forces counterattacked and were able to reoccupy towns and defensive positions up to 35 kilometers (22 miles) east of Kyiv, while Russian troops resorted to their overstretched supply lines. In the south, logistical problems and Ukrainian resistance are slowing Russians on their way west to the port of Odessa, the ministry said.
In fact, the Russians are no longer in full control of Kherson, the first major city to fall to Moscow’s forces, the senior US defense official said. The official said the southern city was being fought over by Ukrainians in heavy fighting. The Kremlin denied losing full control.
The Russian military said 1,351 of its soldiers died in Ukraine and 3,825 were injured, although it was not immediately clear whether this included the separatists in the east or others not belonging to the Defense Ministry, such as the National Guard. Earlier this week, NATO estimated that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers were killed in four weeks of fighting.
Rudskoi’s surprising statement came as a Western official reported that a seventh Russian general, Lieutenant General Yakov Rezanstev, had died in Ukraine and that a colonel had been “deliberately” killed by his own demoralized men.
Earlier Friday, Ukrainian authorities said about 300 people were killed in last week’s Russian airstrike on a Mariupol theater used as a shelter, making it the war’s deadliest known attack on civilians so far.
The bloodshed in the theater fueled allegations that Moscow was committing war crimes by killing civilians, either intentionally or through indiscriminate fire.
This photo released on March 16, 2022 by the Donetsk Region Civil-Military Administration Council shows the drama theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, damaged after shelling. (Donetsk Regional Council of Civil-Military Administration via AP)
For days, the Mariupol government was unable to provide a casualty figure for the March 16 bombing of the Mariupol Grand Drama Theater, where hundreds of people were said to be taking cover, with the word “CHILDREN” printed in Russian in giant white letters on top the ground outside to repel air raids.
When announcing the death toll on Friday on its Telegram channel, the city government referred to eyewitnesses. However, it was not immediately clear how witnesses got to the figure or if rescue workers had finished excavating the ruins.
US President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the theater bombing came as an “absolute shock, especially given that it was so clearly a civilian target.” He said it showed “a brazen disregard for the lives of innocent people” in the besieged port city.
The Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner said shortly after the attack that more than 1,300 people had taken refuge in the theater, many of them because their homes had been destroyed. The building had an air raid shelter in the basement, and some survivors emerged from the rubble after the attack.
“This is a barbaric war and under international conventions, premeditated attacks on civilians are war crimes,” said Mircea Geoana, NATO Deputy Secretary General.
He said Putin’s efforts to break Ukraine’s will to resist are having the opposite effect: “What he’s getting in response is an even more determined Ukrainian army and an even more united West in supporting Ukraine.”
For civilians, misery continues to worsen in Ukrainian cities, which are increasingly resembling the ruins left behind by Russian forces’ campaigns in Syria and Chechnya.
Children sit in a refugee center in Nadarzyn near Warsaw, Poland on Friday March 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
In the village of Yasnohorodka, some 50 kilometers west of Kyiv, Russian troops who were there earlier in the week appeared to have been driven out as part of a counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces.
The tower of the village church was damaged by an explosion and the houses at the main crossing were in ruins.
“You can see for yourself what happened here. People were killed here. Our soldiers were killed here,” said Valeriy Puzakov from Yasnohorodka.
As for Mariupol, “there was nothing left of Mariupol,” said Evgeniy Sokyrko, who was among those waiting for an evacuation train at Zaporizhia, a way station for refugees from the devastated port city. “In the last week there have been explosions like I’ve never heard before.”
Oksana Abramova, 42, said she mourned those left behind in the city who were cut off from communications by shelling from cellphone, radio and television towers and have no means of escape.
“I think about how they are, where they are, all the time. Still hiding, are they alive? Or maybe they’re not there anymore,” she said.
In Kyiv, the ashes of the dead are piling up in the main crematorium because so many relatives have left and urns have not been collected. And the northern city of Chernihiv is all but cut off after Russian forces destroyed bridges and left people without electricity, water and heat, authorities said.
For those in need – the elderly, children and others unable to join millions heading west – food shortages are mounting in a country once known as the breadbasket of the world.
People try to extinguish a fire at a market after a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Friday March 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
In relentlessly shelled Kharkiv, hundreds of panicked people took refuge in the subway and in the emergency room of a hospital full of wounded soldiers and civilians.
Mostly elderly women lined up stoically to collect food and other urgent supplies this week as explosions thundered in the distance. Wriggling in anticipation, a young girl watched as a volunteer’s knife sliced through a giant cheese board, slicing out thick slices, one for each hungry person.
“Among those who stayed, there are people who can walk alone, but also many who cannot walk, elderly people,” said Hanna Spitsyna. “All these people need diapers, swaddle blankets and food.”