Kyiv officials are warning residents that street fighting is underway against Russian forces, and they are urging people to seek shelter.
The warning issued Saturday advised residents to remain in shelters, to avoid going near windows or on balconies, and to take precautions against being hit by debris or bullets.
An adviser to Ukraine’s president says that fighting is raging in the capital and in the country’s south, and that the Ukrainian military is successfully fending off Russian assaults.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Saturday that small groups of Russian forces tried to infiltrate Kyiv and engaged in fighting with Ukrainian troops.
He said that Russia wants to seize control of the Ukrainian capital and destroy the country’s leadership, but said the Russian military has failed to make any gains and that the Ukrainian forces control the situation in Kyiv.
He said Russian forces were also focusing on the country’s south, where intense fighting is underway in Kherson just north of Crimea, and in the Black Sea ports of Mykolaiv, Odesa and around Mariupol.
He added that Russia considers it a priority to seize the south, but it has failed to make any significant gains.
“Ukraine hasn’t simply withstood it. Ukraine is winning,” Podolyak said at a briefing.
Britain, meanwhile, said Saturday that Russia’s advance had been slowed by strong Ukrainian resistance.
Armed Forces Minister James Heappey said fighting in the capital, Kyiv, was so far confined to “very isolated pockets of Russian special forces and paratroopers.”
He said that “the main armored columns approaching Kyiv are still some way off.”
He said: “It looks like the Russian plan is nowhere near running to schedule. I think that will be a great cause of concern for President Putin and rather points to the fact that there was a lot of hubris in the Russian plan and that he may be awfully advised.”
Russian forces launched coordinated missile and artillery attacks on Ukrainian cities on Saturday including the capital, Kyiv, where gunfire erupted near government buildings in the city center, military officials said.
Ukrainian authorities have urged citizens to help defend Kyiv from advancing Russian forces who invaded on Thursday in the worst European security crisis in decades.
Russian forces captured the southeastern Ukrainian city of Melitopol on Saturday, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported, as Moscow launched coordinated cruise missile and artillery strikes on several cities.
Ukrainian officials were not immediately available for comment on the fate of Melitopol, a city of about 150,000 people. If confirmed, it would be the first significant population center the Russians have seized since their invasion began on Thursday.
Earlier, Ukrainian officials said Russian forces fired cruise missiles from the Black Sea at Mariupol, as well as Sumy in the northeast and Poltava in the east.
Kyiv authorities said a missile hit a residential building and a Reuters witness said another hit an area near the airport. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Earlier, gunfire erupted near city-center government buildings, a Reuters witness said. The cause was not clear.
Zelenskiy, speaking in a video message from outside his Kyiv office, was defiant. “We will not put down weapons, we will defend our state,” he said.
Ukrainian authorities have urged citizens to help defend Kyiv from the advancing Russian forces but even as the fighting grew more intense, the Russian and Ukrainian governments signaled an openness to negotiations, offering the first glimmer of hope for diplomacy since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion.
The air force command earlier reported heavy fighting near an air base at Vasylkiv southwest of the capital, which it said was under attack from Russian paratroopers.
It said one of its fighters had shot down a Russian transport plane. Reuters could not independently verify the claims.
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the president’s office, said the situation in Kyiv and its outskirts was under control.
“There are cases of sabotage and reconnaissance groups working in the city, police and self-defense forces are working efficiently against them,” Podolyak said.
Kyiv residents were told by the defense ministry to make petrol bombs to repel the invaders.
Some families cowered in shelters and hundreds of thousands have left their homes to find safety, according to a U.N. aid official.
Ukraine said more than 1,000 Russian soldiers had been killed. Russia did not release casualty figures. Zelenskiy said late on Thursday that 137 soldiers and civilians been killed with hundreds wounded.
PUTIN’S APPEAL
After weeks of warnings from Western leaders, Putin unleashed a three-pronged invasion of Ukraine from the north, east and south on Thursday, in an attack that threatened to upend Europe’s post-Cold War order.
“I once again appeal to the military personnel of the armed forces of Ukraine: do not allow neo-Nazis and (Ukrainian radical nationalists) to use your children, wives and elders as human shields,” Putin said at a televised meeting with Russia’s Security Council.
“Take power into your own hands.”
Putin has cited the need to “denazify” Ukraine’s leadership as one of his main reasons for invasion, accusing it of genocide against Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies dismiss the accusations as baseless propaganda.
Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence at the fall of the Soviet Union and Kyiv hopes to join NATO and the EU – aspirations that infuriate Moscow.
Putin says Ukraine, a democratic nation of 44 million people, is an illegitimate state carved out of Russia, a view Ukrainians see as aimed at erasing their more than thousand-year history.
‘READY TO TALK’
Western countries have announced a barrage of sanctions on Russia, including blacklisting its banks and banning technology exports. But they have stopped short of forcing it out of the SWIFT system for international bank payments.
The United States imposed sanctions on Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov. The European Union and Britain earlier froze any assets Putin and Lavrov held in their territory. Canada took similar steps.
The invasion triggered a flurry of credit rating moves on Friday, with S&P lowering Russia’s rating to “junk” status, Moody’s putting it on review for a downgrade to junk, and S&P and Fitch swiftly cutting Ukraine on default worries.
But amid the chaos of war came a ray of hope.
A spokesman for Zelenskiy said Ukraine and Russia would consult in coming hours on a time and place for talks.
The Kremlin said earlier it offered to meet in the Belarusian capital Minsk after Ukraine expressed a willingness to discuss declaring itself a neutral country while Ukraine had proposed Warsaw as the venue. That, according to Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov, resulted in a “pause” in contacts.
“Ukraine was and remains ready to talk about a ceasefire and peace,” Zelenskiy’s spokesman, Sergii Nykyforov, said in a Facebook post. “We agreed to the proposal of the President of the Russian Federation.”
But U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Russia’s offer was an attempt to conduct diplomacy “at the barrel of a gun” and Putin’s military must stop bombing Ukraine if it was serious about negotiations.
At the United Nations, Russia vetoed a draft Security Council resolution that would have deplored its invasion, while China abstained, which Western countries took as proof of Russia’s isolation. The United Arab Emirates and India also abstained while the remaining 11 members voted in favor.
The White House asked Congress for $6.4 billion in security and humanitarian aid for the crisis, officials said, and Biden instructed the U.S. State Department to release $350 million in military aid.
Story cited here.
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