Russia launches fierce rocket attack on Ukrainian city of Kharkiv Bombardment overshadows talks between Moscow and Kyiv officials on the border with Belarus
Russian forces have launched a heavy bombardment of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, an assault that overshadowed the first direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials since President Vladimir Putin began his invasion five days ago. Residents of the city said they had come under intense artillery and rocket fire from Russian positions. Video footage shared on social media showed high-rise apartment blocks in Kharkiv being hit by heavy shelling that shrouded the sky with plumes of dark smoke. “Dozens of civilians are dying,” said regional governor Oleh Sinegubov. “It’s happening during the day when people go to pharmacies, for food, for drinking water. This is a crime.” Russia’s military operation, unleashed five days ago, has failed to unseat Ukraine’s government or capture any major cities, but has uprooted hundreds of thousands of civilians who have fled to neighbouring countries in search of safety. The war has cranked east-west tensions to new heights, with Putin putting the country’s nuclear deterrent on high alert and the west imposing swingeing sanctions on Moscow that sent the rouble into a tailspin and prompted Russia’s central bank to impose capital controls. A defiant Putin denounced the west as an “empire of lies”. Western officials have warned that the number of civilian deaths from Russia’s invasion is likely to increase as a result of Moscow’s decision to deploy heavy artillery attacks on the cities of Kharkiv and Kyiv. “I am very concerned at what we are seeing today in the increased use of artillery, both rocket and tube artillery in Kyiv, in Kharkiv . . . that increase in artillery risks being far more indiscriminate,” said a western official. “As a consequence we are going to see an increase in civilian casualties.” As Russia faced increasing international isolation over its invasion, Emmanuel Macron, president of France, phoned Putin to demand he end the offensive, Macron’s office said. He urged the Russian leader to stop all strikes against civilians, preserve civilian infrastructure and provide safe access to key roads, especially south of Kyiv, Macron’s office added. The Elysée said Putin “confirmed his willingness to pursue these three points”. According to the Kremlin, Putin told Macron that a settlement was possible “only if Russia’s legitimate security interests are unconditionally taken into account”. That included recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea, the peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and “demilitarising” and “de-Nazifying” the Ukrainian state. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators held talks on Monday near the Belarus border, but they failed to yield a breakthrough. Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who took part in the negotiations, said the delegations would return to their respective capitals for consultations. “The talks are difficult . . . The Russians unfortunately still have an extremely biased view of the destructive processes they have unleashed,” he said. Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia’s delegation, said: “The most important thing is that we agreed to continue negotiating.” While Russia has made some military gains in southern Ukraine, the pace of its advance has slowed and it is yet to take any big Ukrainian population centres, with the capital, Kyiv, still under government control. Destroyed Russian military vehicles in Kharkiv Destroyed Russian military vehicles in Kharkiv © Sergey Bobok/AFP/Getty A senior US defence official said Russian forces had advanced roughly 5km towards Kyiv over the past 24 hours and were now within 25km of the centre of the capital. The move on Kyiv “still appears to be their main line of effort”, he added. “We expect that they’re going to want to continue to move forward and try and circle the city in coming days, but they’re not there yet.” In southern Ukraine, Russian attempts to cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea appeared to be having more success. Its forces have captured the towns of Berdyansk, on the Sea of Azov, and Enerhodar, according to a Russian defence ministry statement. Reports suggested that the port of Mariupol, the last big stronghold of Ukrainian resistance that has stopped Russia from connecting the eastern border region of Donbas to Crimea, was surrounded. Russian and Ukrainian military claims cannot be independently verified. Ukraine’s military said Russian troops continued to attack airports, air defence systems, critical infrastructure and residential areas around the country, and had launched missile strikes on buildings in the cities of Zhytomyr and Chernihiv. But the bombardment of Kharkiv appeared to be particularly intense. Sinegubov, the regional governor, said Russia had used “weapons prohibited by all international conventions — in particular, cluster bombs” and targeted residential areas. “There was no military infrastructure here,” he said. “There is no excuse for this crime.” Recommended Gideon Rachman Vladimir Putin’s grand plan is unravelling One doctor working at a Kharkiv hospital said it had admitted at least 17 people injured by shelling, and that a 17-year-old girl had been killed after being hit in the chest. “This is a Russian-speaking region of Ukraine,” the doctor said. “All this situation feels like an illusion. It feels like we are dreaming.” In Kyiv, a curfew imposed on Saturday was lifted on Monday, allowing local residents to leaving their homes to stock up on supplies. Russia’s armed forces denied claims that they had encircled the capital and said civilians could safely leave on the highway to the town of Vasylkiv, the scene of heavy weekend fighting. Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, on Monday said the alliance was stepping up its support for Ukraine, with air-defence missiles, anti-tank weapons and humanitarian and financial aid. Additional reporting by Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Comments are closed.
