Faced with the intensification of air raids and bombardments in the kyiv region, the mayor of the city, Vitali Klitschko, believes that “no one is safe anymore” in the Ukrainian capital. Yes “the military situation is still under control”according to him, faced with the advance of the Russian armored columns, the defenders of kyiv can on the other hand do nothing, at this stage, against the aviation and the artillery. “All scenarios are possible”including the worst, that of a destruction of the city, estimates Mr. Klitschko, Tuesday March 15, during an interview with The world.
In order to encourage people to “stay in the underground shelters or at home”, Vitali Klitschko has decreed a very strict new curfew in kyiv, which came into force at nightfall on Tuesday. This is the second time since the outbreak of the war, on February 24, that the city has been sealed off in this way, beyond the daily night curfews.
The first curfew, two weeks earlier, had been justified by a search operation for “spies” and “saboteurs” that the Russian army has infiltrated into kyiv, including units whose mission is to assassinate the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. This second curfew, officially intended to “protection of civilians” according to the mayor, is also motivated, according to a Ukrainian special forces officer, by the accentuation of military pressure on the capital and by attempts to infiltrate Russian commandos through forests, coming from Hostomel, in the north -West of the city.
The Russian offensive against kyiv intensified on Tuesday, first with at least three missile strikes against civilian buildings in the morning shortly before dawn, then with incessant shelling in the suburbs for a few hours in the morning, then again after the curfew comes into effect in the evening. The air-raid sirens sounded regularly again, as during the first days of the war.
kyiv, priority target of the Russian army
The morning shelling in the Podilskyi and Shevchenkivskyi districts, which killed four people, helped to restore a climate of fear in the Ukrainian capital. Two apartment buildings and a factory converted into offices were affected. Each time, it’s the same spectacle of desolation, with gutted facades blackened by fire, ravaged apartments. In the hours that followed, the inhabitants tried, as best they could, to clean up the rubble and what was left of the broken windows.
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