Time stands still as Kyiv waits for the final act
It seems hard to believe it’s been only two days since Russia launched its unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The pure chaos that has reigned as Russian missiles strike locations across the country and armoured forces maul the desperate Ukrainian defenders has brought time to a standstill, especially in the country’s capital, Kyiv.
It is in that city that Moscow now looks to try to bring the war to a swift end – or, failing that, to turn it into an urban inferno as its forces conquer the capital block by block.
Friday morning started much the same as the first day of the war. Ukrainian and US defence officials warned of an air raid on the capital at 3am local time, and while it took another hour to arrive, it was more ferocious than the last. Roughly 40 ballistic and cruise missiles struck targets across the city, including a residential apartment block.
Dramatic footage of what appeared to be a Russian jet shot down over the city briefly inspired hope in the defenders – until it emerged that the opposite was true, it was a Ukrainian fighter hit by Russian anti-aircraft fire from armoured columns only a few dozen kilometres away.
The next stage of Russia’s plan appeared shortly after dawn. Reports flooded in that Russian special forces had entered Kyiv, seeking to decapitate the Ukrainian government in one stroke by capturing, or killing, the country’s leadership, especially the defiant president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
A series of distant explosions were audible from downtown Kyiv at midday, followed by – for the first time – the sound of small arms fire from automatic rifles chattering somewhere in the distance. Amid reports of Russian operatives active in the government district, Ukraine’s members of parliament themselves were armed, itself a dire sign of the times.
The situation appeared to have calmed down by late afternoon – a few civilians ventured out onto the streets to gather supplies, but in even fewer numbers than the previous day.
But the situation in the capital, analysts believe, is only set to get worse.
Justin Bronk, a research fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, laid out in stark terms what Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy is likely to entail next.
“We will likely know in the next 24 hours what the situation in Kyiv will be [in the near future],” Bronk said on a phone call. “Russia is currently trying to incapacitate the Ukrainian command in one blow, sending spetsnaz into the capital to seize Ukraine’s leaders, especially Zelenskiy. Once that occurs, they will install one of the many pro-Russian figures from within Ukraine’s government as a stooge and try to end the conflict quickly. Their hope is that Ukrainian resistance will crumble without centralised leadership,” Bronk said.
If that does not occur, Putin’s other option is far more terrifying.
“If they cannot capture [Zelenskiy], Russia will then have to try and take the city conventionally,” Bronk said. “The Ukrainian army will be able to use the city to their advantage [defensively], but that will only stiffen Russian resolve,” Bronk said. “All urban combat tends to play out the same way. Sooner or later, in order to make progress, the Russians will decide to simply flatten anything in their path. Any building they’re shot at from will be razed. They’ve come this far – they are not going to back down, even from this,” he said.
Those strikes would likely involve air power, heavy artillery and even the TOS-1 thermobaric multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) seen attached to many Russian formations.
“I pray to God we don’t have to see those used in an urban environment, but I fear we will,” said Bronk.
Those fears were only further buoyed by Putin’s newest address, this time targeted at the Ukrainian army itself.
In a speech broadcast from the Kremlin, Putin urged the Ukrainian armed forces to “take power into their own hands,” and rise up against Zelenskiy’s government. “We can talk to you much easier than those neo-Nazis and drug addicts who currently sit in power in Kyiv,” Putin said, in rhetoric even more unhinged than his rambling, pseudo-historical speech from Monday.
Russia’s foreign ministry then again proposed a meeting to discuss surrender terms, this time in the Belarusian capital of Minsk.
Zelensky, in a display of supreme bravery, meanwhile remained free as of the early evening in Kyiv.
“We are all here,” Zelensky said, standing next to other top Ukrainian officials on a street somewhere in Kyiv. “We are not leaving. Our soldiers are here. We are defending our independence,” he said.
For the capital’s beleaguered citizens, meanwhile, another long night in the shelters lay ahead. New missile strikes hit the city around 10pm, while Russian jets were reportedly inbound for heavier strikes. The city’s metro stations, meanwhile, now featured men armed with Kalashnikovs guarding the entrances, a sign of the threat of Russian infiltrators. “There are Russians in the city,” one of them told bne IntelliNews.
For Ukraine’s capital, there will be little sleep again tonight.
Russian forces face fierce resistance in Kyiv
By James Massola
February 26, 2022 —
Russian forces faced fierce resistance on the streets of Kyiv and across Ukraine as the ferocity of Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion entered a third day on Saturday, with coordinated missile and artillery strikes and gunfights in the centre of the capital, Kyiv.
Just after midnight on Saturday, local time, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky - Russia’s number one target for assassination - warned his citizens of the “hardest night” ahead as Moscow’s forces prepared to storm the capital.
Natali Sevriukova outside her Kyiv apartment block following a rocket attack on Friday.
In a show of defiance the Ukrainian president released a video of himself on the streets of Kyiv in the early hours of Saturday morning, local time, reassuring his country’s citizens that the military would stand up to the Russian invasion and not lay down its weapons.
“We will protect the country,” he said. “Our weapon is our truth, and our truth is that it’s our land, our country, our children. And we will defend all of that.”
An adviser to the president said fighting was raging in the capital and in the country’s south, but that the Ukrainian military was successfully fending off Russian assaults.
Meanwhile, footage emerged of a damaged apartment building in Kyiv that had been hit by a missile or rocket.
Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday the military had targeted a range of Ukrainian military installations with long-range Kalibr cruise missiles.
He said that since the start of Russia’s attack on Thursday the Russian military had hit 821 Ukrainian military facilities including 14 air bases and 19 command facilities and had destroyed 24 air defence missile systems, 48 radar stations, seven warplanes, seven helicopters, nine drones, 87 tanks and eight military vessels.
Ukrainian citizens Yaryna and Sviatovslav Fursin, who got married just hours after Russia launched its invasion of their country. They spent their first day as a married couple collecting their rifles and getting ready to defend Ukraine.
The US government offered Mr Zelensky help to evacuate Kyiv, to avoid being captured or killed, but he rejected that offer and reportedly said, according to a US intelligence official, “the fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride”.
As explosions rang out across the capital and the country, as helicopters and fighter jets raced overhead and tanks and other military vehicles poured in, Ukrainian soldiers and ordinary citizens bravely faced the Russian invaders.
Ukrainian officials said Russian forces fired cruise missiles from the Black Sea at the cities of Sumy, Poltava and Mariupol and there was heavy fighting near the southern city of Mariupol.
Ukrainians were warned by their government to remain in their shelters, to avoid going near windows or on balconies and to stay off the streets as street fighting got underway against Russian forces.
Further sanctions were slapped on the Russian regime by the United States, European Union, Canada and Australia, including measures that directly targeted Mr Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other members of the regime.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne said Australia would look to impose direct sanctions on Mr Putin and Mr Lavrov and left the door open to the possible expulsion of Canberra-based Russian diplomats, though such a move was not imminent.
“It is not something that we are considering currently,” she said. “It enables us to have a direct line of communication with the Russian government.”
Senator Payne said Mr Putin was being targeted because he was “personally responsible for the deaths and the suffering of innocent Ukrainians”.
Russian forces attack Kyiv in nighttime assault
Russian forces have attacked the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv in a nighttime assault, with explosions recorded across the city.
“There is determination to ensure that Russia faces a high cost for what is an unprovoked and unjustified attack on its neighbour.”
Those sanctions have stopped short, so far, of forcing Russia out of the SWIFT system for international bank payments - a move that would further damage the country’s economy.
Hundreds of people attended a Stop War in Ukraine rally at Martin Place in Sydney’s CBD, waving the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag and placards that read “Stop Putin”, “Help us stop this war” and “Australians stand with Ukraine”.
There were calls for a ban on Russian citizens being able to visit Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison is expected to attend a vigil for Ukraine on Sunday and will address the gathering.
Russia’s president appealed to Ukraine’s armed forces to take power from the country’s elected government and not allow “neo-Nazis” to “use your children, wives and elders as human shields”. Mr Zelensky has pointed out he is Jewish and not a Nazi.
Mr 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.
President Joe Biden asked Congress for about $8.8 billion in security and humanitarian aid for the crisis, US officials said, and Mr Biden instructed the State Department to release $480 million in military aid to Ukraine.
At the time of publication, an estimated 137 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians had been killed and another 316 had been wounded, according to the Ukrainian government, though other sources estimated the number of Ukrainians and Russians killed already ran into the hundreds.
A spokesman for Mr Zelensky 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.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military was reportedly putting up a stronger fight than had been expected, amid suggestions Russian forces were advancing more slowly than they initially anticipated.
However, Russia has reportedly only sent in one third of the estimates up to 190,000 troops that had massed on Ukraine’s borders in the days leading up to the invasion.
Ukrainian forces also reported shooting down a second Russian Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane near Bila Tserkva, 85 kilometres south of Kyiv, according to two American officials with direct knowledge of conditions on the ground in Ukraine. The first Il-76 heavy transport plane was shot down near Vasylkiv, a city 40 kilometres south of Kyiv, with paratroopers onboard.
Meanwhile, thousands of Ukrainian citizens continued to flee the fighting and Mr Putin’s attempt to redraw European borders in the most dramatic fashion since the end of the Cold War.
The UEFA Champions League final was moved from Russia’s second largest city, St Petersburg, to Paris, the Formula 1 Grand Prix due to be held in Sochi in September was cancelled and Aeroflot’s multi-million dollar sponsorships of Manchester United was terminated.
In New York, Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution demanding Moscow stop its attack on Ukraine and withdraw all troops.
The vote was 11-1, with China, India and the United Arab Emirates abstaining. It showed significant but not total opposition to Russia’s invasion of its smaller, militarily weaker neighbour.
The United States and other supporters knew the resolution wouldn’t pass but argued it would highlight Russia’s international isolation.
With Associated Press, Reuters, Tim Barlass, Andrew Taylor
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