World

U.S. to Send Arms to Ukraine, as Russia Intensifies Campaign of Destruction


LVIV, Ukraine – Russian forces stepped up their bombardment campaign to wreak havoc on Ukrainian cities and towns on Saturday, as the White House announced it would send an additional $200 million in weapons and equipment to help Ukraine. , despite Moscow.

Soldiers fight every street in a tree-lined suburb of Kyiv, the nation’s capital, and some residents cried as they dragged their belongings across a destroyed bridge, trying to escape the violence. Russian forces have arrested the mayor of a captured city, an act that has sent hundreds of outraged residents into the streets in protest.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine accused Moscow of terrorizing the country to break the will of the people. He called it “A war of destruction”.

He said an estimated 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the war, which is the first time the government has released the number of soldiers killed.

Mr Zelensky denounced what he called the kidnapping of the mayor – who refused to cooperate with the Russian military after they took over his city – as “a new stage of terror, when they are trying to eliminate representatives of the legitimate local government of Ukraine. ”

Russian forces have not achieved a major military victory since the first days of the invasion more than two weeks ago, and the attacks have reinforced Moscow’s strategic direction toward artillery fire. increasingly indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets.

The US announced that it would provide more weapons to the Ukrainian armyincluding missiles to bring down warplanes and tanks, comes just hours after Russia warned that convoys used for “thoughtless delivery” of weapons to Ukraine would be “targets”. legitimacy” to Russian forces.

Unable to quickly take over the country by air, land and sea, the Russian military deployed missiles, rockets and bombs to destroy apartment buildings, schools, factories and hospitals, making increased the slaughter and suffering of civilians, and forced more than 2.5 million people to flee the country.

According to Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, pain has been especially devastating in the besieged city of Mariupol, which is experiencing “the worst humanitarian disaster on the planet”.

At least 1,582 civilians have died since Russia’s siege of Mariupol began 12 days ago, he said, and residents are struggling to survive and are forced to bury their dead in mass graves .

“Without drinking water and any medicine for more than a week, maybe even 10 days,” an employee working for Doctors Without Borders in Mariupol said in an audio recording released by the organization. released on Saturday.

“We have seen people die from lack of medicine, and there are a lot of such people inside Mariupol,” the employee said.

During a 90-minute phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France urged Putin to accept an immediate ceasefire, according to the French government. , which describes the negotiations as “frank” and “tough”.

France says Mr Putin is not ready to stop the war and says he “places the responsibility for the conflict on Ukraine” and appears “determined to achieve his goals”.

In the summary of the call, the Kremlin said Putin discussed “a number of issues related to the agreements being drafted in response to well-known Russian requests,” but did not specify what those requirements were. that demand.

In the coming weeks, NATO, which has vowed to protect its allies from any attack by Russian forces, plans to gather 30,000 troops from 25 countries in Europe and North America in Norway. to conduct live-fire drills and other operations. cold weather military exercises.

Exercises that Norway holds every six months, announced more than eight months agoNATO said, and unrelated to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to which NATO said it was responding with “precautionary, proportionate and non-escalating measures”.

But this training takes on greater significance as Russia ramps up its bombardment of Ukrainian population centers.

Around the capital Kyiv, Russian forces advanced into the suburbs but were slowed down by Ukrainian troops who had counterattack with ambushes on armored columns. On Saturday, artillery ramped up around Kyiv, with a small rumbling heard in most parts of the city.

By Saturday, there was no indication that the Russian military would make further efforts to move armored columns closer to the capital. Instead, soldiers appear to be fighting for control of the towns along the highways that surround it.

In Irpin, about three miles from the Kyiv city limit, Ukrainian and Russian soldiers fought street by street on Saturday, turning a quiet suburb just two weeks ago into a suburban battleground.

“We’re trying to push them back but we don’t control the town,” said Vitaly, a Ukrainian soldier who asked not to reveal his last name for security reasons.

He took up a position outside what had previously been a unlikely site for combat: a gas station mini market, windows blown out by shelling, on the western edge of the city. Irpin is his hometown, and he joined a volunteer force known as the Territorial Defense Force to try to protect it just two weeks ago.

He described Irpin’s United Street as Ukrainian-controlled; Central Street as a no-man’s land, exposed to both Ukrainian and Russian forces; and University Street occupied by Russian troops.

But the situation went smoothly. Ukrainian soldiers had a “small island” around a shopping mall near the city center, he said, but otherwise it was not always clear who was where.

In the southern city of Mykolaiv, residents woke up Saturday morning to the sound of fierce fighting hours after Russian shells hit several civilian areas, damaging a cancer hospital. mail and caused people to flee into bomb shelters.

Colonel Sviatoslav Stetsenko of the 59th Brigade of the Ukrainian Army, stationed near the front lines, said the early morning fighting was concentrated in the north of the city.

“They are changing their tactics,” said Vitaliy Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv region. “They are deploying in villages and staying at schools and village homes. We cannot shoot back. There are no rules now. We will have to be more brutal with them.”

For almost two weeks, Russian forces have been trying to encircle Mykolaiv and cross the Nam Buh River, which flows through the city and is a natural defense against Russia’s push to the west and Odessa, the Black Sea port. seems to be a major Russian target.

Colonel Stetsenko said Russian forces had not yet crossed the river on Saturday morning, but “they are continuing to bombard Mykolaiv.”

In Melitopol, Russian troops on Friday tied the mayor’s head with a hood and dragged him out of a government building, according to Ukrainian officials, prompting hundreds of residents to take to the streets to protest, according to Ukrainian officials.

“Give it back to the mayor!” protesters shouted, according to eyewitnesses and videos. “Free the mayor!”

But almost immediately after the protesters gathered, Russian military personnel proceeded to shut them down, arresting a woman they believed to have organized the protest, according to two witnesses and a Facebook account. of this woman.

This episode is part of what Ukrainian officials see as an escalating pattern of intimidation and repression. It also illustrates a problem Russia may face even as it tries to bring cities and towns into submission: In at least some of the cities and towns that Russia has captured – mostly in south and east – they are facing mass unrest and uprising.

Mr. Zelensky sought to exploit the public’s fury in a speech to the nation overnight.

“The whole country saw that Melitopol did not surrender to the invaders,” he said. “Like Kherson, Berdyansk and other cities that the Russian army entered did not.” The public’s resistance “will not be changed by putting pressure on the mayor or kidnapping the mayor,” he said.

The mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fyodorov, remained defiant even as Russian troops took over the city after a fierce assault on the first day of the invasion. “We do not cooperate with the Russians in any way,” he said.

Last weekend, with Mr. Fyodorov’s encouragement, Ukrainian flag-waving people took to the streets in Melitopol and other occupied cities. For the most part, Russian soldiers stood aside, even as protesters maneuvered a Russian armored vehicle in a town and drove it through the streets.

While the protests in Melitopol were quickly quelled, the Ukrainian government continued efforts to bring aid to Mariupol, dispatching dozens of buses carrying food and medicine, Ukrainian officials said.

Similar relief efforts have failed in recent days as fighting broke out around the city and land mines punctured roads in the area. In an overnight speech, Mr Zelensky said that the inability to bring aid to the city showed that the Russian military “continues to torture our people, our inhabitants of Mariupol”.

However, he said, “We’ll try again.”

Marc Santora reports from Lviv, Ukraine, Michael Schwirtz from Mykolaiv, Ukraine, and Michael Levenson from New York. Report contributed by Andrew E. Kramer in Kyiv, Ukraine; Eric Schmitt in Washington; Ivan Nechepurenko in Istanbul; Norimitsu Onishi in Paris; and Julie Turkewitz in Bogotá, Colombia.



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