Fate of Ukraine city Kherson unclear, Mariupol encircled ahead of 2nd round of talks
Little optimism for scheduled Moscow-Kyiv peace talks in Belarus; Zelensky vows that Russian soldiers will have ‘not one quiet moment’ as explosions rock capital
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Russian troops appeared to seize Kherson, the first major Ukrainian city to fall in a war that has drawn global outrage and ahead of ceasefire talks Thursday.
With a column of Russian tanks and other vehicles apparently stalled for days outside the capital of Kyiv, fighting continued Thursday on multiple fronts across Ukraine.
Russia’s forces claimed to have taken complete control of Kherson, which would be the biggest city to fall in the invasion thus far. Britain’s Defense Ministry said that was possible, though not yet verified.
A senior US defense official earlier disputed the idea that the Russians controlled Kherson, a Black Sea shipbuilding city of 280,000.
“Our view is that Kherson is very much a contested city,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Ukrainian president’s office told the AP that it could not comment on the situation in Kherson while the fighting was still going on.
Russian troops entered the Ukrainian city of Kherson, forcing their way into the council building, the mayor said, after a day of conflicting claims over whether Moscow had made the first major gain of a city in its eight-day-long invasion https://t.co/c9vDXGXPm2 pic.twitter.com/g0N7C2IxlP
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 3, 2022
The mayor of Kherson, Igor Kolykhaev, said Russian soldiers were in the city and came to the city administration building. He said he asked them not to shoot civilians and to allow crews to gather up the bodies from the streets.
“We don’t have any Ukrainian forces in the city, only civilians and people here who want to LIVE,” he said in a statement later posted on Facebook.
The mayor said Kherson would maintain a strict 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew and restrict traffic into the city to food and medicine deliveries. The city will also require pedestrians to walk in groups no larger than two, obey commands to stop and not to “provoke the troops.”
“The flag flying over us is Ukrainian,” he wrote. “And for it to stay that way, these demands must be observed.”
A second round of talks aimed at ending the fighting was expected later Thursday in the Brest region of neighboring Belarus, which also borders Poland — though the two sides appeared to have little common ground.
Overnight, Associated Press reporters in the capital Kyiv heard at least one explosion before videos started circulating of apparent strikes on the capital.
Huge explosion 'like a small nuke' hits Kyiv after fall of major city of Kherson to the Russians https://t.co/ZSdXo7PA04 pic.twitter.com/YU0p0z7GMT
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) March 3, 2022
The Ukrainian president’s office reported a powerful explosion Wednesday night between the Southern Railway Station and the Ibis hotel in Kyiv. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry is located near that area.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had knocked out a reserve broadcasting center in the Lysa Hora district, about 7 kilometers (4 miles) south of the government headquarters. It said unspecified precision weapons were used, and that there were no casualties or damage to residential buildings.
A statement from the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces didn’t address the strikes, saying only that Russian forces were “regrouping” and “trying to reach the northern outskirts” of the city.
In a videotaped address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Ukrainians to keep up the resistance. He vowed that the invaders would have “not one quiet moment” and described Russian soldiers as “confused children who have been used.”
“We are a people who in a week have destroyed the plans of the enemy,” he said. “They will have no peace here. They will have no food. They will have here not one quiet moment.”
He said the fighting is taking a toll on the morale of Russian soldiers, who “go into grocery stores and try to find something to eat.”
“These are not warriors of a superpower,” he said. “These are confused children who have been used.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine portrayed invading Russian troops as directionless, even as Russia captured the city of Kherson.
"They don't know why they are here," he said of Russian soldiers. https://t.co/lwNbJZPkB4 pic.twitter.com/LSZAXtX7VV
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 3, 2022
In other developments, the UK Defense Ministry said Mariupol, a large city on the Azov Sea, was encircled by Russian forces.
However, Ukraine’s military said Russian forces “did not achieve the main goal of capturing Mariupol” in its statement.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said the attacks there had been relentless.
“We cannot even take the wounded from the streets, from houses and apartments today, since the shelling does not stop,” he was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.
Borodyanka. ???????? pic.twitter.com/d04f5kkzH2
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 2, 2022
Meanwhile, the senior US defense official said an immense Russian column of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles appeared to be stalled roughly 25 kilometers (16 miles) from Kyiv and had made no real progress in the last couple of days.
The convoy, which earlier in the week had seemed poised to launch an assault on the capital, has been plagued with fuel and food shortages, the official said.
Russia’s long-telegraphed invasion has frequently appeared hamstrung by poor logistics, tactical blunders and fierce resistance from Ukraine’s underpowered and outgunned military — and from ever-swelling ranks of volunteer fighters.
Scores of images have emerged of burned-out Russian tanks, the charred remains of transporters and of unarmed Ukrainians confronting bewildered occupying forces.
“The advance on Kyiv has been rather not very organized and now they’re more or less stuck,” military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer told the AP in Moscow.
At least 227 civilians have been killed and another 525 wounded since the invasion began, according to the latest figures from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Earlier, Ukraine said more than 2,000 civilians have died, a figure that could not be independently verified.
The UN office uses strict methodology and counts only confirmed casualties, and admits its figures are a vast undercount.
Russia isolated
Russian President Vladimir Putin now finds himself an international pariah, his country the subject of sanctions that sent the ruble into further freefall on currency markets Thursday.
Russia’s central bank — whose foreign reserves have been frozen in the West — imposed a 30 percent tax on all sales of hard currency, following a run on lenders by ordinary Russians.
The unfolding financial costs were underlined as ratings agencies Fitch and Moody’s slashed Russia’s sovereign debt to “junk” status.
Felgenhauer said with the Russian economy already suffering, there could be a “serious internal political crisis” if Putin does not find a way to end the war quickly.
“There’s no real money to run to fight this war,” he said, adding that if Putin and the military “are unable to wrap up this campaign very swiftly and victoriously, they’re in a pickle.”
Russia reported its military casualties for the first time in the war, saying nearly 500 of its troops have been killed and almost 1,600 wounded. Ukraine did not disclose its own military losses.
Ukraine’s military general staff said in a Facebook post that Russia’s forces had suffered some 9,000 casualties in the fighting. It did not clarify if that figure included both killed and wounded soldiers.
Refugee rush
Around Ukraine, others crowded into train stations, carrying children wrapped in blankets and dragging wheeled suitcases into new lives as refugees.
In an email, UN refugee agency spokesperson Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams told the AP that the refugee count surpassed 1 million as of midnight in central Europe, based on figures collected by national authorities.
Shabia Mantoo, another spokesperson for the agency, said that “at this rate” the exodus from Ukraine could make it the source of “the biggest refugee crisis this century.”
The mass evacuation could be seen in Kharkiv, a city of about 1.5 million people where residents desperate to escape falling shells and bombs crowded the city’s train station and pressed onto trains, not always knowing where they were headed.
The EU Commission said it will give temporary residence permits to refugees fleeing the violence and allow them to study and work in the 27-nation bloc. The move would need the approval of member states, which have already expressed broad support.
The Times of Israel Community.