LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – Fighting raged northwest of Kiev on Saturday and several other Ukrainian towns were surrounded by Russian weapons, which Ukrainian authorities accused of jeopardizing attempts to evacuate civilians with its bombardments and air raids.
Volodimir Zelensky said Russia was sending troop reinforcements to Ukraine after suffering what he called the heaviest casualties in decades. According to him, the Ukrainian army neutralized 31 Russian battalion tactical groups. He did not provide any details and it was not possible to independently verify these statements.
In a television message, the Ukrainian president also said he had spoken with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whom he asked to put pressure on Russia for the release of the mayor of the city of Melitopol, captured by Russian forces on Friday according to Ukrainian authorities.
More than 2,000 residents of this city in southern Ukraine now in Russian hands demonstrated in front of the town hall to demand the release of the island, Ivan Fedorov, said the deputy chief of staff of the Ukrainian presidency, Kirilo Tymoshenko. Russia did not comment on the mayor of Melitopol.
The Elyse for its part reported a telephone conversation in the middle of the day between Emmanuel Macron, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Poutine and Olaf Scholz.
The Russian offensive launched on February 24 has already forced 2.5 million Ukrainians to flee their country, while hundreds of thousands of others are hiding in besieged cities.
A port city on the shores of the Sea of Azov in southeastern Ukraine, Mariupol, in particular, has been under blockade for 12 days and relentlessly pounded by Russian forces. At least 1,582 civilians were killed there, said the town hall, whose toll could not be independently verified.
Hundreds of thousands of inhabitants are deprived of food, water, heating and electricity, according to local authorities.
UN REPORTS MARIOUPOL LOOTING
“There are reports of looting and violent clashes between civilians over what few basic resources remain in the town,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. “Drugs for life-threatening illnesses are rapidly running out, hospitals are only partially functioning and there is a shortage of water and food.”
In addition to Mariupol, the Ukrainian authorities hoped to open humanitarian corridors on Saturday for localities in the regions of Kiev and Sumy in particular.
The governor of the Kyiv region, Oleksiy Kuleba, however, declared that the fighting continued during these evacuation attempts, further complicated by the fear of air raids by the Russian army, and his counterpart in the Donetsk region, in eastern Ukraine, pointed out that the incessant shelling made it difficult to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Mariupol.
While a maternity hospital in this city was bombed this week, Russia denies targeting civilians and qualifies its intervention in Ukraine as a “special operation” intended to demilitarize its neighbor to guarantee its own security.
Each side accuses the other of obstructing the evacuation of civilians.
Warning sirens sounded in most Ukrainian towns on Saturday morning, urging people to take shelter in the face of the threat of air raids, local media reported.
Visibly exhausted, the governor of Chernihiv, about 150 km northeast of Kiev, appeared in a video in front of the ruins of the Ukraine hotel, bombed this Saturday according to him.
“There is no more hotel,” Vyacheslav Tchaus said, wiping tears from his eyes. “But Ukraine itself still exists and it will win.”
UKRAINE EXPECTS ASSAULT ON KIEV AND KHARKIV
Russian missile fire destroyed an airfield on Saturday morning and hit an ammunition depot near the town of Vassilkiv, in the Kiev region, said the mayor, Natalia Balassinovitch, quoted by the Interfax Ukraine agency.
Ukraine says it expects new assaults around Kiev, on Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city near the border with Russia, and in Donbass, in the east of the country, where pro-Russian separatists who took weapons in 2014 are gaining momentum.
The Russian army seems to be regrouping, certainly with a view to an offensive on Kiev within a few days, according to the British Minister of Defense. Fighting continues northwest of the capital and the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remain surrounded and under intense Russian bombardment, he added on Saturday.
According to British intelligence, the Russian army is making only limited gains on the ground, its advance being hampered by logistical problems and Ukrainian resistance.
In this context, the leaders of the European Union meeting at the Versailles summit announced on Friday new support measures for Ukraine, a member of the “European family” in the face of the Russian invasion, even if membership is not agenda, and to stop sourcing Russian hydrocarbons by 2027.
At the same time, the United States, the G7 and the European Union have announced their intention to abolish the “most favored nation clause” from which Russia benefits for its commercial exchanges as well as new embargo measures on a vast range of products imported or exported by Moscow.
(Reuters editorials, by Michael Perry and Philippa Fletcher, French version Tangi Salan, Jean-Stphane Brosse and Bertrand Boucey)
by Pavel Polityuk and Natalia Zinets