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Russian forces have continued a widespread attack on Ukrainian cities, despite claims the country would focus on the Donbass region to the east, as Russian troops gave the last fighters defending Mariupol a deadline to surrender.
The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there had been rocket attacks and shelling in eight regions of the country in the past 24 hours. These included northern areas from which Russia is said to have withdrawn and the western city of Lviv, where many IDPs are taking refuge.
In Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said three people were killed and 34 injured in rocket attacks on Saturday. A 15-year-old boy and a baby are said to be among the dead.
Among the injured are four people working in a community kitchen set up by World Central Kitchen and run by celebrity chef José Andrés. Andres said staff were shocked but safe and “giving food in the middle of a senseless war is an act of courage, resilience and resistance”.
In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko advised those who had left the city not to return just yet.
“We do not rule out further attacks in the capital,” he said. “If you have the opportunity to stay a little longer in the cities where it’s safer, do it.”
Klitschko said one person was killed and several injured in Saturday’s strike in the Darnytskyi district, which includes a mix of apartment blocks, train stations and shopping malls.
The attacks in the capital come after early signs of a reopening began to appear, as people took walks and foreign embassies planned their reopening after Russian troops announced two weeks ago they were withdrawing.
As battle raged for the southern city of Mariupol, Zelensky said the city’s fate could be decided by battle or diplomacy.
“Either our partners give Ukraine all the necessary heavy weapons, the planes, and without exaggeration, immediately, so that we can ease the occupier’s pressure on Mariupol and break the blockade,” he said in a video addressed to the nation on Saturday. .
“Or we do it through negotiations, where the role of our partners must be crucial.”
Russia’s military has claimed the attacks were aimed at military targets, including a munitions factory in Brovary, outside Kyiv. Defense spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the country had deployed precision-guided air-launched missiles and claimed to have hit Ukrainian air defense radars near Sievierodonetsk in the east and several ammunition depots elsewhere.
The British Ministry of Defense said Russian forces are continuing to deploy combat and support teams from Belarus to eastern areas.
“Although Russia’s operational focus has shifted to eastern Ukraine, Russia’s ultimate goal remains the same,” the ministry said on Sunday.
“He is committed to forcing Ukraine to abandon its Euro-Atlantic alignment and assert its own regional dominance.”
Meanwhile, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who met Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week at the first meeting with Western leaders since the invasion began, said Putin was “in his own war logic.”
In an interview on NBC Meet the Press, Nehammer said he believes Putin thinks he’s going to win the war and “we need to look him in the eye and confront him with what we’re seeing in Ukraine.”
Nehammer said he confronted Putin about what he saw during a visit to the Kiev suburb of Bucha, where more than 350 bodies were found along with evidence of murder and torture under Russian occupation, and that “it wasn’t a friendly conversation.” .
Zelenskyy estimates that between 2,500 and 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and about 10,000 injured in the war.
Russian forces have also captured around 700 Ukrainian soldiers and more than 1,000 civilians, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Saturday.
Ukraine has roughly the same number of Russian troops as prisoners and intends to organize an exchange, but demands the release of civilians “unconditionally,” he said.
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