Airstrikes hit many Ukrainian cities on Saturday, especially in the suburbs of the capital.
This Saturday, on the seventeenth day of their offensive in Ukraine, the Russian forces did not achieve any major territorial advance, but continued with great intensity the clashes around Kyiv and the bombardments in the major Ukrainian cities of the southern fronts and from the North East.
Kyiv prepares for a ‘relentless defence’
In Kyiv, fighting continued to the northwest, west and east of its outskirts. On Saturday morning, satellite images quoted and used by several Anglo-Saxon media showed buildings and buildings on fire in several cities in these geographical areas. British Ministry of Defense officials claimed that the bulk of the Russian ground forces were now about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) from the center of the city, the equivalent of the distance between Kyiv-Irpin and Kyiv- Brovary, municipalities located respectively to the west and east of the capital, and the scene of intense clashes and resistance from Ukrainians caught in a vice.
If the pincer strategy is still in progress, the Russians are unable, for the time being, to achieve a significant breakthrough and would be in the process of “resupply and re-equip frontline units”according to a note from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). “Kyiv is a symbol of resistance” who is preparing for “relentless defense”proclaimed in a video Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In Vasylkiv, 40 kilometers south of the capital, Russian rockets hit an oil terminal which caught fire, reported the head of the Kyiv regional military administration, Oleksiy Kueba. The city’s airport was also “completely destroyed”, according to the mayor, Natalia Balassinovitch. Already on Friday, two military airports in the country had been hit by bombing, in Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk, two cities located in the far west of the country and so far spared from the attacks – four Ukrainian soldiers lost their lives there. This Saturday evening, the southern suburbs of Kyiv were still unoccupied by Russian infantry and remained the most secure exit route to escape from Putin’s priority urban target.
In Mariupol, an “almost hopeless” situation
In Mariupol, Putin’s troops continued the bombardments, the objective being to force this port city on the Sea of Azov, a martyr city besieged since March 1, to capitulate. The area around the Suleiman mosque, for example, was the target of air raids, it was learned on Saturday through local authorities and officials. While the government said the mosque itself had been hit, with around 80 civilians inside, the president of the Mariupol Suleiman Mosque-related association, Ismail Hacioglu, said a bomb was actually “fallen at a distance of 700 meters” of the building. “The Russians do not allow the passage of the humanitarian aid and evacuation convoy”also alerted, Ismail Hacioglu, very early Saturday, in a message published on Instagram.
Mariupol is deprived of water, gas, electricity, communications. A situation “almost hopeless”, alarms Doctors Without Borders (MSF), while the talks for the implementation of a humanitarian and secure corridor have been floundering for a week now. According to the Ukrainian authorities, at least 1,582 civilians have died in this city in twelve days of conflict. “The situation is very difficult, humanly unsustainable”said the Elysée on Saturday, urging Vladimir Putin to “raise the seat”.
Incessant fighting in Mykolaiv, Chernihiv and Sumy
In the port city of Mykolaiv in the south of the country, a city-lock before Odessa, the bombardments hardly ceased overnight from Friday to Saturday, and would have hit in particular a cancer care center and an eye hospital. “They fired on these civilian areas, without any military objective”castigated Dmytro Lagotchev, head of the affected hospital. According to our special correspondent Pierre Alonsohomes and the parking lot of a shopping center were also affected.
Same situation on the north-eastern front of Ukraine. In Chernihiv, a shelled town bordering Russia and Belarus, the local electricity network and internet communications are now almost in ruins, warned Saturday Vyacheslav Chaus, head of the administration of the region. At the level of Sumy and Kharkiv, strategic cities to allow the Russians to advance in the center of the country, the inhabitants are still besieged but the Ukrainian soldiers still do not seem to have ceded control to the enemy troops. On Saturday, local media also reported that anti-bombing warning sirens were sounding throughout Ukraine, notably in Odessa and Dnipro. So much “uncoordinated and sporadic Russian offensive operations against the main Ukrainian cities” which confirm, according to the analysis of the Institute for the Study of War, “the Ukrainian General Staff’s assessment that Russian forces are facing increasing morale and supply problems and have lost the initiative.”
Update at 7:40 p.m. with the latest military developments.