Russian forces stepped up their campaign of bombardments aimed at devastating Ukraine’s cities and towns Saturday, as the White House announced it was sending an additional $200 million in arms and equipment to help Ukraine, defying Moscow.
Soldiers fought street-by-street battles in a leafy suburb of Kyiv, the nation’s capital, and some residents wept as they dragged belongings across a destroyed bridge, trying to escape the violence. Russian forces detained the mayor of a captured city, an act that prompted hundreds of outraged residents to pour into the streets in protest.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of terrorizing the country in an attempt to break the will of the people. "A war of annihilation,” he called it.
He said an estimated 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the war, the first time the government had offered the number of its own soldiers killed.
Zelenskyy denounced what he called the kidnapping of the mayor — who had refused to cooperate with Russian troops after they seized his city — as "a new stage of terror, when they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of the legitimate local Ukrainian authorities.”
Russian forces have not achieved a major military victory since the first days of the invasion more than two weeks ago, and the assaults reinforced Moscow’s strategic turn toward increasingly indiscriminate shelling of civilian targets.
The American announcement of more arms for Ukraine’s military, including missiles for taking out warplanes and tanks, came just hours after Russia warned that convoys used for the "thoughtless transfer” of weapons to Ukraine would be "legitimate targets” for Russian forces.
Unable to mount a quick takeover of the country by air, land and sea, Russian troops have deployed missiles, rockets and bombs to destroy apartment buildings, schools, factories and hospitals, increasing civilian carnage and suffering, and leading more than 2.5 million people to flee the country.
The suffering has been particularly devastating in the besieged city of Mariupol, which is experiencing "the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet,” according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
At least 1,582 civilians have died since the Russian siege of Mariupol began 12 days ago, he said.
@ The New York Times
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