Ukraine war: Russian invasion grinds to a halt

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears to have ground to a halt with no significant territory captured despite a weekend of heavy fighting, with Kyiv’s men claiming to have taken out dozens of helicopters and recaptured a city this morning – sparking hopes that the unlikeliest of victories may be on the cards.

Putin’s men renewed their bombardments on Mariupol, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv this morning as hundreds of civilians tried to evacuate Irpin – on the outskirts of Kyiv – across a destroyed bridge after days of heavy attacks in an attempt to encircle the capital. But Russian commanders have not significantly advanced their frontline since the city of Kherson and nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia were captured last week. 

Meanwhile the Ukrainian armed forces claimed to have destroyed up to 30 Russian helicopters that had been moved to Chornobaivka airport, near Kherson, overnight and to have retaken the city of Chuhuiv, near Kharkiv, killing two Russian commanders – Lt. Col. Dmitry Safronov, and Lt Col. Denis Glebov – in the process. 

Russia also tacitly acknowledged the loss of two other commanders – Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky and Lieutenant Colonel Denis Glebov – whose funerals were held in Russia at the weekend.

Video also emerged which appeared to show Ukrainian defence forces based in Odessa, the country’s largest port, exchanging fire with ships overnight – one of which suffered a hit. Ukraine’s ministry of defence has since claimed the vessel, a corvette named Vasily Bykov, was destroyed. 

Ukraine’s military now estimates that 11,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in fighting along with the loss of 1,000 armoured vehicles, 290 tanks, 68 helicopters, 46 planes and dozens of other piece of hardware. Independent observers give lower totals, but Franz-Stefan Gady – of the International Institute for Strategic Studies – said the situation is never-the-less ‘slowly becoming unsustainable for Russia’.

US intelligence believes Russia has committed 95 per cent of the invasion force it had assembled on Ukraine’s border to the fight, meaning significant reinforcements to push its attacks forward are unlikely to come soon – and could simply run into many of the same logistical problems that plagued the early assault.  

That has prompted some – including UK general Admiral Sir Tony Radakin – to predict that Russia could actually lose the war. Asked by the BBC on Sunday whether victory for Putin’s men was ‘inevitable’, as many had predicted before the fighting started, he responded: ‘No.’ 

Defeat for Russia does not automatically mean victory for Ukraine, however. Despite heavy losses Putin’s men have still been able to capture key territory, particularly in the south, cutting Kyiv off from many of its vital Black Sea trading routes and naval bases.

Ukraine’s forces have proven dogged in defence but it remains to be seen whether they can counter-attack successfully and push Russian forces back across the border.

It came as Ukrainian and Russian forces met in Belarus for a third round of talks between the two sides. Russia has for the first time raised the prospect of halting its operation, provided Ukraine recognises the independence of the Donbass, acknowledges Crimes as Russian territory and pledges never to join NATO. It is the first time that Russia has explicitly stated its position in talks, which Kyiv has rejected. 

It has also been announced that Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov will meet Ukrainian counterpart Dymtro Kuleba in Turkey on Thursday – the first high-level summit between the two sides on neutral ground since the fighting started.  

In the meantime, Russia is expected to keep up its bombardment of Ukraine’s largest cities with Moscow claiming to have opened up evacuation routes out of some of them – Mariupol, Sumy, Kharkiv and Kyiv – on Monday morning so civilians could flee. Ukraine quickly rejected the plan after it emerged most of the evacuation routes led into Russia or Belarus. 

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk rejected the ceasefire offer on Monday, saying it is ‘not an acceptable option’ for Ukrainians to flee to the country that is attacking them. Civilians ‘aren’t going to go to Belarus and then take a plane to Russia’, she said. 

Red Cross volunteers working out of Mariupol also revealed that one of the route out of the city suggested by Russia on Sunday was covered in land mines. 

Meanwhile Volodymyr Zelensky vowed that ‘God will not forgive’ and Ukraine ‘will not forget’ the slaughter of civilians by Russian forces, saying a ‘day of judgement’ is coming for them.

Zelensky, in a late-night address to his countrymen on the Orthodox Christian holiday of ‘Forgiveness Sunday’, recalled how a family of four were among eight civilians killed by Russian mortars while trying to flee the city of Irpin – near Kyiv – earlier in the day. ‘We will not forgive. We will not forget,’ he told listeners.   

‘We cannot forgive the hundreds upon hundreds of victims. Nor the thousands upon thousands who have suffered,’ he added. ‘God will not forgive. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never.’

‘Instead of humanitarian corridors, they can only make bloody ones,’ Zelensky said, as Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko added: ‘There can be no ‘green corridors’ because only the sick brain of the Russians decides when to start shooting and at whom.’

Shortly after they spoke, columns of smoke were seen rising over the city of Mykolaiv, on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, as Russian forces resumed shelling. 

The exact number of civilian casualties is unclear, though is estimated by Ukraine to be in the thousands as residential areas of major cities are indiscriminately bombed using thermobaric and cluster munitions amid evidence of ‘hit squads’ targeting civilian vehicles. The UN has confirmed 406 civilian deaths, though admits the true toll will be higher, and says that that 1.5million people have fled the fighting.   

Britain’s Europe Minister James Cleverly said Russia’s latest offer of a ceasefire and an escape route for civilians was ‘cynical beyond belief’. 

Evacuation routes published by Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency showed that civilians in some areas will only be able to leave towards Russia and Belarus.

Mr Cleverly told BBC Breakfast: ‘It appears cynical beyond belief. There is a view that Vladimir Putin believed there was a widespread desire of Ukrainians to be closer to Russia, to be more Russian. I think that has been proven to be a complete nonsense by the circumstances we are seeing.

‘Providing evacuation routes into the arms of the country that is currently destroying yours is a nonsense.’

He added that ‘ultimately the most humanitarian thing the Russians could do is end this completely illegal, completely unjustified invasion of Ukraine’.

Even after the corridors were announced, Russia’s armed forces continued to pummel Ukrainian cities, with multiple rocket launchers hitting residential buildings. 

The limited ceasefire announcement came a day after hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians attempting to flee to safety were forced to shelter from Russian shelling of cities in Ukraine’s center, north and south. Officials from both sides planned a third round of talks Monday.

Russian forces continued their offensive, opening fire on the city of Mykolaiv, 480 kilometers south of the capital of Kyiv, Ukraine’s General Staff said Monday morning. Rescuers said they were putting out fires in residential areas caused by rocket attacks.

Shelling also continued in the suburbs of Kyiv, including Irpin, which has been cut off from electricity, water and heating for three days.

‘Russia continues to carry out rocket, bomb and artillery strikes on the cities and settlements of Ukraine,’ the General Staff said. ‘The invaders continue to use the airfield network of Belarus to carry out air strikes on Ukraine.’

The Russians have also been targeting humanitarian corridors, taking women and children hostage and placing weapons in residential areas of cities, according to the General Staff.

A Russian task force said a ceasefire would start Monday morning, the 12th day of the war, for civilians from Kyiv, the southern port city of Mariupol, Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and Sumy. It wasn’t immediately clear if fighting would stop beyond the areas mentioned in the task force’s statement, or when the ceasefire would end.

The announcement follows two failed attempts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, from which the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated 200,000 people were trying to flee.  

Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for the failure. The Russian task force said Monday’s ceasefire and the opening of the corridors was announced at the request of French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday.

Evacuation routes published by Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency, citing the Defense Ministry, show that civilians will be able to leave to Russia and Belarus. Russian forces will be observing the ceasefire with drones, the task force said. 

Putin said Moscow’s attacks could be halted ‘only if Kyiv ceases hostilities.’ As he has often done, Putin blamed Ukraine for the war, telling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday that Kyiv needed to stop all hostilities and fulfill ‘the well-known demands of Russia.’ 

With no sign of an end to the fighting, western leaders are now working to figure out the best way of responding to Russia’s attack without escalating the situation into an all-out war in Europe which could evolve into the bloodiest and most-destructive conflict in human history.

Putin has already warned that sanctions imposed by the West on Russian are ‘tantamount to a declaration of war’ and that any attempt to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine – which would involve NATO jets shooting down Russian aircraft and attacking ground-based anti-air systems – would prompt retaliation.

NATO and the US have firmly ruled out the idea of sending forces to fight, despite calls from Zelesnky, but are struggling to gage what other responses might trigger Putin to escalate. According to the New York Times, the question being asked in the White House is: ‘Tell me how we don’t get sucked in to a superpower conflict?’

Instead of directly engaging in the fight with Russia, the U.S. and its allies in the 30-member NATO group were sending weapons to Ukraine; more than 17,000 anti-tank weapons, including Javelin missiles, have been sent by land to Ukraine over the borders of Poland and Romania since the conflict began.

A $350 million package of military aid was approved by Congress on February 26, two days into the conflict, and 70 percent of it was delivered in five days. By contrast, a $60 million arms package to Ukraine agreed to in August was not completed until November, the Pentagon said

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that Poland has been given a ‘green light’ to supply MiG fighters to Ukraine’s air force – which their pilots are trained to fly – in exchange for American-made F-16s which would be given to Warsaw to ensure its air force is not depleted.

However, Poland described reports that its jets are being sent to Ukraine as ‘fake news’. Back-and-forth reports of Polish fighters being sent to aid Kyiv have been going on since at least last week. There are fears that such a move would lead Putin to step up his attacks, possibly by trying to invade a second country.

If Putin were to target Poland directly, it would suck NATO into the war because Poland is a member of the 30-state alliance – whose members all pledge to defend one-another in the event they are attacked.  

Meanwhile China – which has so-far sought to tread a middle-ground on Ukraine, pacifying western outrage by abstaining on votes at the UN while still cosying up to Russia economically – has offered to mediate peace talks between the two sides.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi Monday said the friendship between Beijing and Moscow was still very strong, despite international condemnation of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, as he offered Beijing’s help in mediating peace.

‘The friendship between the two peoples is rock-solid, and both sides’ future cooperation prospects are very vast,’ said Wang at an annual press briefing, adding that China would send humanitarian aid to Ukraine and was ‘willing to work with the international community to carry out necessary mediation’.

Putin launched his invasion with a string of false accusations against Kyiv, including that it is led by neo-Nazis intent on undermining Russia with the development of nuclear weapons.

As Russian attacks worsened, a brief reprieve from fighting in Mariupol collapsed. Heavy artillery hit residential areas in other large cities, local officials reported.  

Presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich described a ‘catastrophic’ situation in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, where efforts to evacuate residents on Sunday failed. About eight civilians, including a family, were killed by Russian shelling in Irpin, according to Mayor Oleksander Markyshin.

Video footage showed a shell slamming into a city street, not far from a bridge used by people fleeing the fighting. A group of fighters could be seen trying to help the family. Arestovich said the government was doing all it could to resume evacuations. 

‘This is likely to represent an effort to break Ukrainian morale,’ the U.K. Ministry of Defense said of Russian tactics as the war entered its 12th day Monday. Fighting has caused 1.5 million people to flee the country, which the head of the U.N. refugee agency called ‘the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.’

British military officials compared Russia’s tactics to those Moscow used in Chechnya and Syria, where surrounded cities were pulverized by airstrikes and artillery.

Food, water, medicine and almost all other supplies were in desperately short supply in Mariupol, where Russian and Ukrainian forces had agreed to an 11-hour cease-fire that would allow civilians and the wounded to be evacuated. But Russian attacks quickly closed the humanitarian corridor, Ukrainian officials said.

The handful of residents who managed to flee the city before the humanitarian corridor closed said the city of 430,000 had been devastated.

‘We saw everything: houses burning, all the people sitting in basements,’ said Yelena Zamay, who fled to one of the self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russian separatists. ‘No communication, no water, no gas, no light, no water. There was nothing.’

Russia has made significant advances in southern Ukraine as it seeks to block access to the Sea of Azov. Capturing Mariupol could allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that most other countries considered illegal.

But much of the Russian advance has become stalled, including an immense military convoy that has been almost motionless for days north of Kyiv.

A senior US defense official said Sunday that the U.S. assesses that about 95% of the Russian forces that had been arrayed around Ukraine are now inside the country. 

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, said Russian forces continue to advance in an attempt to isolate Kyiv, Kharkhiv and Chernihiv, but are being met with strong Ukrainian resistance.

Emergency officials in the Kharkiv region said Monday that overnight shelling killed at least eight people and wrecked residential buildings, medical and education facilities and administrative buildings.

Ukraine’s professional and volunteer fighters have fought with great tenacity, though they are greatly outmatched by the Russian army. Volunteers lined up Saturday in Kyiv to join the military. Ukraine is also planning to fill an international legion with 20,000 volunteers from dozens of countries, though it was not clear how many were in Ukraine.

‘The whole world today is on Ukraine’s side, not only in words but in deeds,’ Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Ukrainian television Sunday night.

The West has broadly backed Ukraine, offering aid and weapon shipments and slapping Russia with vast sanctions. But no NATO troops have been sent to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy has also heaped criticism on Western leaders for not responding with more force to Russia. He reiterated a request for foreign protectors to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which NATO so far has ruled out because of concerns such an action would lead to a far wider war.

Zelenskyy also asked the United States and NATO countries to send more warplanes to Ukraine. But that idea is complicated by questions about how to provide aircraft to Ukrainian pilots.

He later urged the West to tighten its sanctions on Russia, saying that ‘the audacity of the aggressor is a clear signal’ that existing sanctions are not enough.

Russia has become increasingly isolated in the days since the invasion began, closing itself off to outside sources of information as sanctions bite deeply into its economy. The ruble has plunged in value, and dozens of multinational companies ended or dramatically scaled back their work in the country.

On Sunday, American Express announced it would suspend operations in Russia, as well as in Russian-allied Belarus. Also, two of the so-called Big Four accounting firms, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers, said Sunday they would end their relationships with their Russia-based member firms.

TikTok announced Sunday that Russian users would not be able to post new videos or see videos shared from elsewhere in the world. The company blamed Moscow’s new ‘fake news’ law, which makes it illegal, among other things, to describe the fighting as an invasion. Netflix also cut its service to Russia but provided no details.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress is exploring how to further isolate Russia from the global economy, including banning the import of its oil and energy products into the United States.