Ukraine’s defenders hold Kiev, battle for Kharkiv as talks with Russia agreed

In a sign of rising tensions with the West over Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the country’s anti-nuclear forces to be put on alert.

Russia sent a delegation to the southern Belarusian city of Gomel on Sunday, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he refused to meet in a country that has become a launchpad for Russia’s attacks. However, he spoke by phone to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko later in the day, and agreed to meet his envoys along with the Russian delegation at the Ukrainian-Russian border, according to a statement from the Ukrainian president. Mr Lukashenko pledged that there would be no Russian military activity from Belarus during the talks, Kiev said.

It is not clear to what extent the planned talks could end the Russian offensive, which had faced much more resistance from Russian and Ukrainian forces than many in the West had expected. Mr Putin has urged Ukrainian troops to stage a coup against the country’s democratically elected president. Soon after the start of the war, Russian officials said they would speak to Kiev only after Ukrainian troops surrendered their weapons.

Early on Sunday, Russian troops pushed deep into Kharkiv, which lies close to the Russian border. However, many of these light-infantry soldiers were ambushed and killed or captured hours later by the Ukrainian army.

Footage shared by Ukrainian forces on Sunday morning showed five Tiger-M armored vehicles with Russian “Z” markings were destroyed on a Kharkiv road, with Ukrainian soldiers helping Russian ammunition and equipment including several antitank rockets. Had it. A Tiger-M was also seen burning at another Kharkiv crossroads. Kharkiv residents said the city was under Ukrainian control by noon. “We are clearing the city from the enemy,” Kharkiv government Ole Sinyhubov posted on social media.

Ukrainian authorities have ordered Kiev residents to stay indoors until Monday morning while they hunt down Russian intruders, who engaged in multiple gunfights with Ukrainian soldiers and civilian volunteers throughout the night. No gunshots were heard during the day. “Kiev continues to hold out. There are no Russian troops in Kiev,” the city’s mayor Vitaly Klitschko said in a video address.

A flurry of explosions from Russian airstrikes and artillery continued into Kiev until Sunday. A black plume rose over the city skyline from the major fuel depot in the city of Vasilkiv, south of the capital, that caught fire after being extinguished overnight. Residents of areas northwest of Kiev near the Chernobyl nuclear-disaster exclusion zone said Russian armor continued to pour in from Belarus for the expected major attack on Kiev.

Alexander Markushin, the mayor of the city of Irpen, northwest of Kiev, said Sunday’s fighting resulted in the defeat of a Russian tank unit there. Videos posted by Ukrainian officials from Irpen showed Russian armored vehicles in Russian uniforms and smoldering corpses. Local residents said that a separate, much larger column of Russian armor was moving from the west towards Kiev.

Ukraine’s government projected confidence that massive resistance across the country had thwarted Mr Putin’s plan to overthrow the country’s leadership and destroy its command and control capabilities in a lightning strike.

Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Sunday morning: “These three days have changed our country and the world forever. These will be the trials of the times ahead. But now we are not alone in believing in our victory. And That is why we are getting help that was unimaginable three days ago.”

Several countries that previously refused to supply Ukraine with sophisticated weapons to help offset Russia’s military gains have changed their mind in recent days. Ukrainian officials have said that antitank and anti-aircraft missiles supplied to Ukraine by the US, Britain, Poland and the Baltic states even before the start of the war have helped correct the balance.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday that a Russian delegation had arrived in Gomel, Belarus on Sunday morning and was ready to start talks with Ukraine. The Russian delegation includes the president’s aide Vladimir Medinsky; Deputy Minister of Defense and Foreign Affairs of Russia; head of the International Committee of the State Duma of Russia Leonid Slutsky; And Russia’s ambassador to Belarus, Boris Gryzlov, said Mr. Peskov.

Mr Medinsky told the RIA that Russia’s representatives are ready to negotiate at any time.

“For us every hour is a life saved,” the agency quoted him as saying.

In Kiev, residents spent the night in bomb shelters and basements as explosions rocked the city. Ukraine’s military said it had intercepted a ballistic missile fired from Belarus into Kiev.

“We are afraid, trembling all night,” said Lena, a shopkeeper who slept with her colleague in the back of a grocery store in central Kiev. “Please tell me it will be all right.” He kept the shop open so that the neighbors could buy food.

Ukrainian officials and eyewitnesses said one of the Russian air strikes struck a children’s hospital in central Kiev, Okhmatdit, during the night, killing one child and injuring others.

“The night was tough. What they are doing to us is revenge. This is terrorism.”

Mr Zelensky on Sunday announced the creation of a new International Army of the Ukrainian Army, on the lines of the International Brigade, which helped defend the Spanish Republic in the 1930s civil war. Existing law allows foreign nationals to join the Ukrainian military, and Mr. Zelensky urged potential volunteers to contact military attachés to Ukraine’s embassies abroad. “This is not just the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is the beginning of a war against Europe. Against the unity of Europe. Against basic human rights in Europe,” he said.

In the town of Vasilkiv, 20 miles south of Kiev, part of a large fuel depot burned down in the night after a Russian air raid that was painting the sky orange, residents said. Ukrainian officials said fighting with Russian troops had hindered firefighters’ attempts to capture Vasilykiv’s strategically important military airfield. “We are facing an ecological disaster,” the governor of the Kiev region, Oleksiy Kuleba, said in a social media post.

In response to the invasion of Ukraine, the US and European governments increased their economic sanctions against Moscow. Western governments said they would cut several Russian banks off the SWIFT network, an international payments system that facilitates cross-border transactions. The US, EU, UK and Canada also said they would take measures to prevent Russia’s central bank from deploying its foreign reserves to support Russia’s currency and economy.

Meanwhile, international aid to defend Ukraine is multiplying, ranging from private financial donations to government promises to send weapons. Germany said it would deliver anti-tank and Stinger missiles to Ukraine, reversing Berlin’s previous opposition to sending weapons.

Germany also announced on Sunday a major change in its defense and security policies in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, from investing heavily in its military to building strategic energy reserves, indicating that Mr. How is the war giving a blow? Waves across Europe.

So far fierce Ukrainian resistance has frustrated Mr Putin’s massive Russian offensive aimed at overthrowing Ukraine’s elected government and ending its alignment with the West. Military analysts have warned, however, that Russia could resort to more disastrous tactics targeting Ukrainian cities with indiscriminate firepower if its troops’ advances are beaten back.

Russia’s swift victory in the biggest war in Europe in decades substantially changed the geopolitical balance on the continent, giving Mr Putin control of strategically important areas of the former Soviet Union and Russia’s forces in the North Atlantic. placed at the door of the Treaty Organization. ,

European and US officials are increasingly concerned that Mr. Putin’s overarching goal of revising the end of the Cold War, restoring Moscow’s former sphere of influence in the east of Europe, will not stop in Ukraine, a fear that looms large over NATO’s military stance. and Europe’s energy supply, which depends in large part on Russia.

Mr. Zelensky continues to reinforce the message that Ukrainians are fighting and dying not only for their country but for the whole of Europe.

If Ukrainian resistance leads to a long and bloody war – or forces Mr. Putin to end the fighting without achieving his goals – the blow will be his hold on power in Moscow and Russia as a global power. His campaign to reinstate in could threaten both.

Mr Zelensky said in an address on Saturday that Russia had failed in its attempt to quickly replace them with a puppet regime and that Ukrainian troops were lined up across the country. He called on Ukrainians and foreign volunteers abroad to join the fight. “Everyone who can come back to defend Ukraine,” said Mr. Zelensky. “All friends of Ukraine who want to join us, come here too – we will give you weapons.”

Citizens of Ukraine fleeing west are trapped in long lines of cars near the border with Poland. Many people have left their vehicles and have come to the border on foot for several hours carrying children and some belongings in the cold weather.

On Saturday, before the curfew began, the largest lines in the Ukrainian capital were at the Territorial Defense Force’s recruitment centers accepting all volunteers. In a sports facility converted for this purpose, several hundred volunteers under the command of career military officers loaded crates of ammunition into civilian vehicles and went to their positions.

Outside, hundreds more interested recruits, including women, patiently waited for their turn in a line that stretched around the building. “I never thought that so many people would come. The whole city is now on the rise,” said an official at the site. “A little late, but better late than never.”

Concerned about Russian infiltrators and spies, members of the Territorial Defense did not allow photography and did not give their names. The volunteers said they now had no choice but to fight as the Russian army was at Kiev’s doorstep.

“This morning a Russian rocket hit a building near my house. It was the last straw for me, and now it’s time to take up arms. Everyone in this city who wanted to run has already fled,” One of the new recruits, said a 35-year-old IT specialist.

“There is nowhere to run and there is no point in hiding. All we have to do is drive out the invaders and send them back to where they came from,” said another human-resource expert.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday that Washington would provide $350 million in additional military aid to Ukraine, including “lethal defensive aid” to help Kiev resist Russian armored and air forces.

US officials said the weapons Washington wants to provide Ukraine include Javelin anti-tank weapons, Stinger antiaircraft missiles, small arms and ammunition. The US has previously sent the Javelin among other battlefield systems. In January, the US also approved Latvia and Lithuania to deliver American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Kiev.

Mr Biden on Friday night authorized a new distribution of military aid and approved up to $250 million in overall aid to Ukraine. A person with knowledge of the matter said the administration has asked Congress for an additional $6.4 billion for Ukraine’s aid and defense needs.