However, shelling was heard in kyiv yesterday morning on the front-line suburbs, where Ukrainian forces have regained ground in recent days. The capital itself was not hit, but the windows rattled from the relentless artillery around it.
Evacuated Ukrainians spoke of heavy shelling north of Irpin, with shells landing on the city itself and bodies in the streets.
Chernigov Mayor Vladyslav Astroshenko said Russian bombardment of the city had intensified in the last 24 hours, with more than 100,000 people trapped there with barely a week’s worth of food and medical supplies.
“This is another confirmation that Russia always lies,” Astroshenko told CNN. “In fact, the intensity of the attacks has increased”, with “a colossal mortar shelling in the center of Chernigov” injuring 25 civilians.
Reuters was unable to verify the situation in Chernigov. The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Irpin itself was recaptured by Ukrainian forces this week. Reuters journalists, who entered on Tuesday, saw Ukrainian troops patrolling a ghost town with dilapidated buildings, and the bodies of an old man and a woman lying in the streets.
naive
In a late-night speech, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky made it clear that he did not take anything Moscow says at face value.
“Ukrainians are not naive people,” he said. “Ukrainians have already learned during these 34 days of invasion, and during the last eight years of war in Donbas, that the only thing they can trust is a concrete result.”
Zelensky adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said Moscow was moving some forces from northern Ukraine to the east, trying to encircle the main Ukrainian force there. Some Russians would stay near kyiv to hold off Ukrainian forces, he said.
Russian forces also struck industrial facilities in western Ukraine in three strikes overnight, a regional governor said.
In the past week, Ukrainian forces have made significant gains, retaking towns and villages outside of kyiv, breaking the siege of the eastern city of Sumy and pushing back Russian forces in the southwest.
Journalists visiting the reconquered areas saw razed villages littered with the charred remains of Russian tanks and the charred bodies of soldiers.
In the village of Mala Rohan, in the eastern Kharkov region, two burned-out tanks with their turrets ripped off were near the damaged houses. Maksym, a Ukrainian soldier, said the Russians were being pushed back “slowly but steadily”.
The Pentagon said Russia had begun to withdraw a very small number of troops from positions around kyiv, describing the move as more of a relocation than a withdrawal. “We must all be prepared to see a major offensive against other areas of Ukraine,” spokesman John Kirby told a briefing. “It does not mean that the threat to kyiv is over.”
Russia says it is conducting a “special operation” to disarm and “denazify” its neighbor. Western countries say Moscow launched an unprovoked invasion, including a full-scale assault on the capital that was repelled by Ukraine’s iron-clad defense.
Moscow has said its main target is now southeastern Ukraine, a region called Donbas, where it is trying to capture more territory for separatists it has backed since 2014. The area includes Mariupol, a port of 400,000 razed to the ground after a month. Russian siege, where the United Nations believes thousands of people may have died.
Yesterday, Russian forces were shelling almost all cities along the front line of the region, said the governor of Donetsk, which is part of Donbas. In Mariupol there was again intense fighting.
Source: Ambito
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