ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine – President Biden speaks at a factory in Alabama that builds Javelin missiles that Ukrainian soldiers use against Russian tanks. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed members of Ukraine’s parliament, praising their “best hour”. President Emmanuel Macron of France pressed Russia’s Vladimir V. Putin by phone to end his “devastating act of aggression”. Germany has helped Finland and Sweden – Russia’s Nordic neighbors once wary of provoking Mr Putin – closer to joining NATO.
On Tuesday, Western leaders sought to exploit Russia’s lack of clear battlefield motivation to show support and bolster Ukraine’s resolve – and its arsenal.
“You have blown up the myth of Putin’s invincibility and you have written one of the most glorious chapters in military history and in the life of your country,” Johnson told President Volodymyr Zelensky. of Ukraine and the country’s lawmakers in a video address, the first by a foreign leader to the Ukrainian Parliament.
He announced that Britain would provide an additional weapons package worth about $375 million to Ukraine, including electronic warfare equipment, radar systems and GPS jammers. And he compared Ukraine’s defenses to Britain’s ability to withstand the onslaught of Nazi Germany during World War II. “This is Ukraine’s best hour,” he said.
That show of determination, whether orchestrated or fortuitous, came as the European Union, often divided by political and ideological missteps, moved towards a unified embargo against its oil Russia, as the Pentagon describes the Russian offensive in the Donbas region, eastern Ukraine as “Anemia” and “nausea”, and as British intelligence experts make new assessments of Russia’s military capabilities.
For Ukrainian civilians, however, Russian firepower seemed too effective.
In the ruined city of Mariupol, the Russian army again shelled the devastated Azovstal steel plant and 200 civilians remained guarded there, even as some 130 evacuees reached relative safety in Zaporizhzhia about 140 miles to the west and horror talked for about two months in the bunkers. under the eternal flame.
Russian missiles hit power substations in the city of Lviv, western Ukraine, knocking out some electricity, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi, Report on Twitter. According to its governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, at least 9 people have been killed as a result of Russian attacks in the eastern Donetsk region, including 3 civilians who went to fetch water.
Mr. Biden spoke in Alabama about “the United States alone has committed more than 5,500 Javelins to Ukraine”, and how the workers of the Lockheed Martin missile factory empower the Ukrainian people to defend themselves in the war “between professionals” rights and democracy.” But for all that talk, the fight, now in its third month, increasingly feels like a protracted struggle.
US officials warn that Russia plans to annex the breakaway territories of Donetsk and Luhansk to the east, and the Kherson region to the south. Russians will probably use Voting “fake” to claim controlMichael Carpenter, US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said.
Some analysts wonder why Russia does not target Ukraine’s railways and other infrastructure to prevent Western weapons from reaching the front, or to bomb symbols of institutions. Ukraine or attack the West. Cyber attackS. The The reason could be simply incompetence. However, Mr. Putin, unafraid, may soon upgrade what he calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine to a war, providing a pretext to expand the war and use conscription soldier.
Putin said the West on Tuesday in a phone call with Mr Macron should stop supplying Ukraine with weapons, as they are contributing to “atrocities”. Peace appears to be out of reach, with Putin accusing Ukraine of “not being ready” for serious negotiations, according to the Kremlin’s description of the call.
But American military and political leaders, once apprehensive about Putin’s escalation, have in recent days made clear the goal is to weaken Russia’s military and its ability to invade other countries. of Mr. Putin.
If some European officials fear that such language could make Putin propagate that his invasion of Ukraine was a defensive move against NATO expansion, provoking Putin seems unlikely. like it’s not such a big concern anymore.
In Brussels, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said Russia’s aggression had questioned the “greatest achievement of the European Union: peace in our continent”. He said that Russia violated peace and basic respect for human rights “in Mariupol, in Bucha, and in all places where the Russian military unleashed violence against unarmed civilians.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised to support NATO membership for Sweden and Finland, two countries that had suggested they wanted to join.
“They can count on our support,” Mr. Scholz said at a joint news conference with the leaders of Finland and Sweden.
Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin said: “There will be no turning back. “We now see more clearly where Russia wants to take us: It’s a world of spheres of influence, where the stronger have the last word.”
Those political assertions of power have fueled Russia’s setbacks on the battlefield. Before Mr Johnson addressed Ukraine’s parliament, an intelligence update from the British Ministry of Defense assessed that “failures in both strategic planning and operational execution” had left the Russian military “weak”. significantly more” since the February 24 invasion – even after doubling the defense budget between 2005 and 2018.
The report asserts that Russia’s military failures, combined with international sanctions, will have a “lasting impact” on the resilience of Russian forces for some time.
And as Russia struggles to make progress in Ukraine, a series of unexplained explosions and fires in southern Russia continued on Tuesday, with one blast rocking the city of Belgorod. Russian officials have in some cases blamed the Ukrainians for the explosions. The Ukrainian government has an official policy of neither confirming nor denying attacks inside Russia.
Russo-Ukrainian War: Main developments
On Monday, a railway bridge in Russia’s Kursk region was destroyed in what the region’s governor called vandalism. A series of suspicious fires broke out in different parts of the country. In Moscow, a fire engulfed the vast warehouse of a textbook company that sought to remove the reference to “Ukraine” from its pages. Arkady R. Rotenberg, a close friend and former judo partner of Mr. Putin who became a billionaire during his rule, is the company’s chairman.
At least a dozen suspicious fires have broken out inside Russia recently, many at fuel depots near the border with Ukraine. Some have been deeper inside Russia, including at a military research institute near Moscow.
But Ukrainians, and especially civilians, are bearing the brunt of the war.
Russia said its cruise missile hit a logistics center at a military airport near Odesa. In a statement on Tuesday, the country’s Defense Ministry said the strike destroyed hangars containing Bayraktar TB2 drones, as well as missiles and ammunition from the United States and Europe.
On Tuesday, in a rare but diplomatic victory, a convoy of buses, flanked by white United Nations and Red Cross SUVs, passed checkpoints and territory controlled by Russia and transported nearly 130 women and children to Ukrainian-controlled territory for weeks. sheltered within the sprawling steel structures of Mariupol. Once a vibrant Ukrainian port city, it has become a pile of rubble and streets littered with corpses after relentless Russian bombing.
But on Tuesday, at the steel plant, almost immediately after international negotiators departed with the evacuees, Russian forces attacked buildings where civilians were still sheltering, according to the report. a statement on Telegram of the Azov regiment, where the fighters are inside the factory. Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said more than 200 civilians were still trapped in bunkers below the factory and 100,000 civilians remained in the city.
Aid workers greet Azovstal evacuees in a shopping complex in Zaporizhzhia, providing tea and snacks after they have eaten expired Russian rations cooked on wood stoves.
Olga Savina, an elderly woman, said: “I was in Azovstal for two and a half months and they beat us from all sides. She said the sun had burned her eyes after so many days underground.
Michael Schwirtz reported from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, and Jason Horowitz from Rome. Report contributed by Christopher F. Schuetze from Berlin; Cora Engelbrecht from Krakow, Poland; Mark Landler from London; Zolan Kanno-Youngs from Washington; Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia; Andrew E. Kramer from Kyiv, Ukraine; Jane Arraf from Lviv, Ukraine; Anton Troianovski from Istanbul; and Aurelien Breeden from Paris.
