Russia Intensifies Attack on Ukraine as UN Chief Visits Kyiv
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, April 29: In a virtually face-saving device, Russia pounded targets from practically one end of Ukraine to the other on Friday including bombarding the country’s capital city of Kyiv, within hours of the visiting head of the United Nations appeared on television along with the Ukrainian president.
Considered to be one of the boldest move by Russia since its forces retreated two weeks ago, at least one person, who happened to be a journalist, was killed and several were injured in the attack on Kyiv, including some who were trapped in the rubble when two buildings were hit, rescue officials said.
The bombardment began barely an hour after the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held a news conference with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who said Ukraine has become “an epicentre of unbearable heartache and pain.” A spokesperson said Guterres and his team were safe from the Russian attack.
The journalist killed in the Russian attack was representing the U.S.-backed broadcaster Radio Liberty and was covering the UN chief’s visit to Ukraine, the broadcaster said on Friday. Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) said the body of producer Vira Hyrych had been found on Friday morning in rubble after Thursday’s attack destroyed the bottom two floors of a residential building. It said Hyrych had worked for Radio Liberty since 2018.
“She was going to bed when a Russian ballistic missile hit her apartment in central Kyiv. Russia’s barbarism is incomprehensible,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said. “We call on media organizations to condemn the murder of Vira and all other innocent Ukrainians.”
U.S.-funded RFE/RL, which has covered the former Soviet Union since the Cold War, is one of the main remaining Russian-language sources for news outside Kremlin control, since Moscow effectively shut all independent media within Russia following its invasion of Ukraine on February 24. “The editorial board of Radio Liberty expresses its condolences to the family of Vira Hyrych and will remember her as a bright and kind person, a true professional,” the broadcaster said in a statement.
“Kyiv is still a dangerous place and Kyiv is still the target of Russians, of course. The capital of Ukraine is the goal and they want to occupy it,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, supervising the clean-up before the body of Hyrych was found. Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov called it “an attack on the security of the Secretary-General and on world security.”
The war experts believe that the reason for the spurt in Russian aggression was that the president Vladimir Putin was increasingly becoming desperate because that he has not been able to win it while the Ukrainians appear capable of defending themselves against his onslaught. And for them, not losing was victory.
Ukraine acknowledged on Friday it was taking heavy losses in Russia’s assault in the east, but said Russia’s losses were even worse, as U.S. President Joe Biden called on Congress to send as much as $33 billion to help Kyiv withstand the attack. President Zelensky praised Biden’s offer of massive help, which amounts to nearly 10 times the aid Washington has sent so far since the war began.
Having failed in an assault on Kyiv in the north of Ukraine last month, Russia is now trying to fully capture two eastern provinces known as the Donbas but explosions were reported across Ukraine in Polonne in the west, Chernihiv near the border with Belarus, and Fastiv, a large railway hub southwest of the capital. The mayor of Odesa in southern Ukraine said rockets were intercepted by air defences.
Ukrainian authorities also reported intense Russian fire in the Donbas — the eastern industrial heartland that the Kremlin says is its main objective — and near Kharkiv, a north-eastern city outside the Donbas that is seen as key to the offensive.
In the ruined southern port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian fighters holed up in the steel plant that represents the last pocket of resistance said concentrated bombing overnight killed and wounded more people. And authorities warned that a lack of safe drinking water inside the city could lead to outbreaks of deadly diseases such as cholera and dysentery.
In Zaporizhzhia, a crucial way station for tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing Mariupol, an 11-year-old boy was among at least three people wounded in a rocket attack that authorities said was the first to hit a residential area in the southern city since the war began. Shards of glass cut the boy’s leg to the bone.
The fresh attacks came as the UN chief Guterres surveyed the destruction in small towns outside the capital that saw some of the worst horrors of the first onslaught of the war. He condemned the atrocities committed in towns like Bucha, where evidence of mass killings of civilians was found after Russia withdrew in early April in the face of unexpectedly stiff resistance. “Wherever there is a war, the highest price is paid by civilians,” the U.N. chief lamented.
Separately, Ukraine’s prosecutor accused 10 Russian soldiers of being “involved in the torture of peaceful people” in Bucha. Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova did not say her office had filed criminal charges, and she appealed to the public for help in gathering evidence. Russia denies it targets civilians.
During his nightly video address, Zelensky renewed a pledge to hold Russian soldiers accountable for crimes they commit and said about the 10 identified earlier Thursday: “Some of them may not, after all, live until a trial and fair punishment. But only for one reason: This Russian brigade has been transferred to the Kharkiv region. There they’ll receive retribution from our military.”
In the attack on Kyiv, explosions shook the city and flames poured out of windows in at least two buildings — including one residential one — in the capital, which has been relatively unscathed in recent weeks. Plumes of smoke could be seen over the city.
The explosions in northwest Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky district came as residents have been increasingly returning to the city. Cafes and other businesses have reopened, and a growing numbers of people have been out and about, enjoying the spring weather.
It was not immediately clear how far away the attack was from Mr Guterres. “I was shocked to be informed that two rockets have exploded in the city where I am,” the U.N. chief was quoted as telling the media. “So this is a dramatic war, and we absolutely need to end this war and we absolutely need to have a solution for this war.”
Getting a full picture of the unfolding battle in the east has been difficult because airstrikes and artillery barrages have made it extremely dangerous for reporters to move around. Several journalists have been killed in the war, now in its third month. Also, both Ukraine and the Moscow-backed rebels fighting in the east have introduced tight restrictions on reporting from the combat zone. Western officials say the Kremlin’s apparent goal is to take the Donbas by encircling and crushing Ukrainian forces from the north, south and east.
But so far, Russia’s troops and their allied separatist forces appear to have made only minor gains, taking several small towns as they try to advance in relatively small groups against staunch Ukrainian resistance. Russian military units were mauled in the abortive bid to storm Kyiv and had to regroup and refit. Some analysts say the delay in launching a full-fledged offensive may reflect a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to wait until his forces are ready for a decisive battle, instead of rushing in and risking another failure that could shake his rule amid worsening economic conditions at home because of Western sanctions.
Many observers suspect Putin wants to be able to claim a big victory in the east by “Victory Day” on May 9, one of the proudest holidays on the Russian calendar, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II. Ukraine has urged its allies to send even more military equipment to fend off the Russians.
