Nadiya Trubchaninova, 70, cries as she hugs the coffin of her son Vadym, 48, who was killed by Russian soldiers on March 30 last year in Bucha, during his funeral at the Mykulychi cemetery, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine , Saturday, April 16. , in 2022.
Rodrigo Abd / AP
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Rodrigo Abd / AP
Nadiya Trubchaninova, 70, cries as she hugs the coffin of her son Vadym, 48, who was killed by Russian soldiers on March 30 last year in Bucha, during his funeral at the Mykulychi cemetery, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine , Saturday, April 16. , in 2022.
Rodrigo Abd / AP
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian forces have renewed missile strikes on Kyiv and stepped up artillery fire on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in an apparent strategy to weaken the system Ukraine’s defense system in preparation for what is believed to be an all-out Russian offensive in the east.
These and other attacks scattered across the country are an explosive reminder to Ukrainians and their Western supporters that the whole country is still under threat.
With the port city of Mariupol under siege, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia was “deliberately destroying everyone present there.” He said Ukraine needed more heavy weapons from the West immediately to have a chance to save the city.
Every day brings new discoveries about the civilian victims of an invasion that has disrupted European security. In towns and villages just outside Kyiv, authorities reported finding the bodies of more than 900 civilians, most of them shot dead, since Russian troops withdrew two weeks ago.
After the humiliating loss of the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, the Russian military command announced it would step up missile attacks on the capital. The Russians said they attacked an armored vehicle factory on Saturday, a day after targeting a missile factory.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko warned residents who had fled the city earlier during the war not to return.
“We do not rule out further attacks on the capital,” he said. “If you have a chance to stay in cities that are a bit safer, do it.”
The mayor said Saturday’s strike had killed one person and injured several. It was not clear from the outset what was affected in the attack on Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district. The large area on the southeastern edge of the capital includes a mixture of Soviet-style apartment blocks, newer shopping centers and large-scale retail stores, industrial parks and housing complexes.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said an armored vehicle factory was targeted. He did not specify where the factory is located, but there is one in the Darnytskyi district.
He said the plant was among several Ukrainian military sites hit with “air-launched high-precision long-range weapons”.
Russian rockets hit the city just as residents were taking a stroll, foreign embassies were due to reopen, and other tentative signs of the city’s pre-war life began to emerge. reappeared, after the failure of the Russian army to capture Kyiv and their withdrawal.
Kyiv was one of many targets on Saturday. The Office of the President of Ukraine reports missile and artillery attacks in the past 24 hours in eight regions of the country.
The governor of the Lviv region in western Ukraine, which is only so often affected by the violence of war, has reported air strikes on the area by Russian Su-35 aircraft that took off from neighboring Belarus.
In Kharkiv in the northeast, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said three people were killed and 34 injured on Saturday. An explosion believed to have been caused by a rocket sent rescuers scrambling near an outdoor market. They said one person was killed and at least 18 were injured.
“All the windows, all the furniture, all were destroyed. And the door too,” said stunned resident Valentina Ulianova.
Officials said the day before that, the rocket hit a residential area of Kharkiv, killing a 15-year-old boy, an infant and at least eight others.
Nate Mook, a member of the World Central Kitchen NGO run by celebrity chef José Andrés, said in a tweet that four workers in Kharkiv were injured as a result of a strike. Andres tweeted that the staff was not healthy but safe.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who met Vladimir Putin last week in Moscow – the first European leader to do so since the invasion began on February 24 – said the Russian president “follows the strategic logic of the war.” own picture” for Ukraine.
In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Nehammer said that he thinks Putin believes he is winning the war and “we have to look him in the eye and we have to confront him.” , what we see in Ukraine.”
Nehammer said he confronted Putin about what he saw during a visit to the Bucha suburb of Kyiv, where more than 350 bodies were found along with evidence of murders and torture under the occupation. of Russia, and “it was not a friendly conversation.”
Zelenskyy said in an interview with Ukrainian journalists that the continued siege of Mariupol, which has paid a terrible price for trapped and starving civilians, could jeopardize efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict. end the war.
“The annihilation of all of our men in Mariupol – what they are doing now – could end any form of negotiation,” he said.
Later, in his nightly address to the nation, Zelenskyy said Ukraine needed more support from the West to have a chance to save Mariupol.
“Our partners supply Ukraine with all the necessary heavy weapons, aircraft and non-magnifications immediately, so that we can reduce the occupier’s pressure on Mariupol and break the blockade.” , he said, “or we do so through negotiations, in which the role of our partners must be decisive.”
Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, on Saturday said Ukrainian forces had been driven out of most of the city and remained only at the giant Azovstal steel plant.
Russian Lieutenant General Vladimir Frolov, whose troops were among those besieging Mariupol, was buried Saturday in St.Petersburg after dying in battle, Governor Alexander Beglov said. Ukraine says several Russian generals and dozens of other senior officers have been killed in the fighting.
Capturing Mariupol would allow Russian forces to the south to advance through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, fully linking up with the military in the Donbas region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.
Zelenskyy estimated that 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian troops died in the fighting and that about 10,000 were wounded. The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine said on Saturday that at least 200 children were killed and more than 360 were injured.
Russian forces have also captured about 700 Ukrainian troops and more than 1,000 civilians, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Saturday. Ukraine holds the same number of Russian troops as prisoners and intends to arrange a swap but is demanding the release of civilians “without any conditions”, she said.
Russia’s warning of intensifying attacks on Kyiv comes after it accused Ukraine on Thursday of injuring seven people and damaging about 100 residential buildings with air strikes in the city. Bryansk, an area bordering Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have not confirmed hitting targets in Russia.
At the Vatican, Pope Francis on Saturday called for “gestures of peace in these days marked by the horrors of war” during his homily at the Easter Vigil at St Peter’s Basilica with the participation of the Pope. attended by the mayor of the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol and three members of the Ukrainian Parliament. Francis made no direct mention of the Russian invasion but called, apparently in vain, for an Easter truce in order to achieve a negotiated peace.
