KYIV — A series of powerful explosions rocked residential
districts of
Kyiv early Tuesday killing two people, just hours before talks
between Ukraine and Russia were set to resume.
اضافة اعلان
The airport in the eastern city of Dnipro also came
under heavy bombardment overnight, as the leaders of Poland, the
Czech Republic and Slovenia travelled to the besieged capital Kyiv in a sign of EU support for
Ukraine.
Nearly three weeks into
Russia’s invasion of its
pro-Western neighbor, the human toll of the deadly conflict was increasingly
laid bare, with more than three million forced to flee to neighboring
countries.
The UN said Tuesday that nearly 1.4 million children
have fled Ukraine since the conflict began on February 24 — nearly one child
per second.
Ukraine’s capital has been transformed into a war
zone, with apartment blocks badly damaged from Russian bombardments and half of
the city’s 3.5 million people now gone.
The city’s Mayor
Vitali Klitschko said Tuesday a
35-hour curfew would come into effect from 8pm Tuesday after overnight attacks
in the capital.
“Today is a difficult and dangerous moment,”
Klitschko said.
“This is why I ask all Kyivites to get prepared to
stay at home for two days, or if the sirens go off, in the shelters.”
Four large blasts were heard from the center of the
capital early Tuesday, sending columns of smoke high into the sky.
The city is surrounded to the north and east, and
authorities have set up checkpoints, while residents are stockpiling food and
medicine.
Overnight shelling also caused massive damage at the
airport in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, regional authorities said
Tuesday.
“During the night the enemy attacked the
Dnipro airport. Two strikes. The runway was destroyed. The terminal is damaged.
Massive destruction,” region governor Valentin Reznichenko said.
Hours earlier, Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky issued a new video address sounding a note of cautious optimism about
ongoing peace talks.
EU leaders to Kyiv
He claimed Russia was realizing victory would not come on the battlefield.
“They have already
begun to understand that they will not achieve anything by war,” Zelensky said.
He said Monday’s
talks were “pretty good ... but let’s see. They will continue” Tuesday.
The two sides are
still far apart in the negotiations, with Moscow demanding Ukraine turn away
from the West and recognize Moscow-backed breakaway regions.
Ukrainian
negotiators say they want “peace, an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of
Russian troops”.
In an unprecedented
show of solidarity with the embattled president, the Polish, Czech, and
Slovenian prime ministers boarded a train for Kyiv to meet Zelensky on Tuesday.
“In such crucial
times for the world, it is our duty to be in the place where history is being
made,” Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki said in a Facebook post.
It is the
highest-level EU delegation to go to Kyiv since the war began.
Russia’s military
progress has been slow and costly, with Moscow apparently underestimating the
strength of Ukrainian resistance.
Military experts
believe Russia’s military now needs time to regroup and resupply its troops,
paving the way for a possible pause or slowdown in fighting.
‘Stop the war’
The head of Russia’s
national guard Viktor Zolotov has reportedly admitted the operation was “not
going as fast as we would like” but said victory would come step-by-step.
Reports say Moscow
has turned to Beijing for military and economic help — prompting what one US
official said were several hours of “very candid” talks between high-ranking US
and Chinese officials.
On Tuesday, Chinese
Foreign Minister
Wang Yi said his nation does not want to be impacted by
Western sanctions on Russia, as US pressure grows on Beijing to withdraw
support from Moscow.
“China is not a
party to the crisis, still less wants to be affected by the sanctions,” Wang
said.
Russian President
Vladimir Putin has ordered his forces “to hold back on any immediate assault on
large cities” according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov Monday, who cited
“civilian losses” as the reason for stalling an attack.
He added, however,
that the defense ministry “does not rule out” the possibility of putting large
cities “under its full control”.
Meanwhile,
Ukraine’s allies have piled pressure on Putin’s regime with unprecedented
economic sanctions, and the
Kremlin faces domestic pressure despite widespread
censorship of the war.
During Russia’s
most-watched evening news broadcast on Monday, a dissenting employee entered
the studio holding up a poster saying “Stop the war. Don’t believe the
propaganda.”
An opposition
protest monitor said the woman, an editor at the tightly controlled state
broadcaster Channel One, was detained following the episode.
Across Ukraine,
Russia’s invasion has continued to take a bloody toll, destroying cities and
ensuring that many lives will never be the same again.
A correspondent for
Fox News — Britain’s Benjamin Hall — was injured and hospitalized while
reporting on the city outskirts, the network said, a day after a US journalist
was shot dead in Irpin, a frontline Kyiv suburb.
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