KYIV, Ukraine — A dozen days into a devastating war and an unfolding refugee crisis, Russian forces on Monday launched withering new attacks on Ukrainian civilian areas and strategic centers, seeking to cripple the country’s defenses and establish supremacy over Ukraine’s vital Black Sea coast.
Russia announced a new cease-fire Monday to allow civilians to escape four beleaguered Ukrainian cities amid little sign that its forces would honor that pledge. The humanitarian catastrophe sparked by the fighting deepened as food, water and power dwindled, and then ran out, in some besieged cities and towns.
Shelling attacks drew closer to the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv, even as a massive Russian convoy remained at a near-standstill miles to the north. The city bristled with makeshift defenses — sandbags, old tires, tree branches — as its mayor, Vitali Klitschko, vowed that defenders would fight to the death at “every house, every street, every checkpoint.”
