Amid a deepening humanitarian catastrophe in besieged Ukrainian cities and towns, representatives for the two sides held a third round of talks Monday, but reported no political progress toward ending Europe’s biggest ground war in decades.
A dozen days into a devastating war and a burgeoning refugee crisis, Russian forces on Monday launched withering new attacks on civilian areas and strategic centers in Ukraine, seeking to cripple the country’s defenses and establish supremacy over its vital Black Sea coast.
Western military analysts and officials have cited a plethora of factors, including Russian forces’ supply problems, low troop morale and tactical blunders — in combination with a furious Ukrainian defense, by regular and irregular fighters, which clearly surpassed Kremlin expectations. Late Monday, the Ukrainian military said it shot down two Russian warplanes over Kyiv.
As the Russian offensive has widened, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians remain trapped in their homes; some have died while trying to flee, including an entire family killed on a suburban Kyiv road that President Volodymyr Zelensky likened to “a shooting gallery” for invading troops. “Providing evacuation routes into the arms of the country that is currently destroying yours is a nonsense,” said James Cleverly, Britain’s minister for Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron deemed the Russian offer “political and moral cynicism.”Russia’s war in Ukraine is causing a European refugee crisis on a scale not seen since World War II and raising fears of a return to Cold War-era dynamics.
Senkevich accused Russian forces of deliberately targeting civilian apartment buildings, saying that attacks overnight had left wide swaths of Mykolaiv without heat. He posted a video showing what looked like a residential building, its center blackened by a blazing fire presumably caused by a shell.