KYIV, Ukraine — Across Kyiv, there were signs that Ukrainians were trying to mount a robust defense.
Major road and bridge junctions were blocked with streetcars, buses and garbage trucks. Near the ring road that surrounds the capital, trucks with rocket launchers parked in fields and released a fusillade toward Russian forces’ position to the northwest. And as Russian troops pressed on outside the city, residents of Kyiv’s suburbs were feeling the strain.
“We’ve seen more civilians. Sometimes soldiers too, but much more civilians,” said Vladimir Andriiets, deputy director of the main hospital in Bovary, 15 miles northwest of Kyiv’s center. “Bullet wounds, shrapnel wounds; the ones we’ve seen are very severe, because many of them we see an appendage amputated.”
