LVIV, Ukraine — Far from the war’s front lines, central and western Ukraine were on high alert Friday after Russian missiles rained down on the capital, Kyiv, killing at least one person and shattering a relative return to calm that saw the United Nations chief visit mass graves on the city’s outskirts.
In a video address overnight, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the aerial attack Thursday near the center of Kyiv after his meeting with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres was a sign of “Russia’s true attitude to global institutions” and would provoke “a strong response.”
“We still have to drive the occupiers out,” Zelenskyy said, citing recent bombings in the capital as well as in Fastiv — southwest of Kyiv — and Odesa, a strategic port city on the Black Sea that’s increasingly become a target of missiles, including one that struck a major bridge and railway link this week.
The shifting state of affairs in Ukraine, where Russia had telegraphed its intention to focus on the eastern Donbas region claimed by pro-Moscow separatists yet has continued to assault parts of the west and center, prompted the U.S., Britain and other NATO members to increase troops around Ukraine and pledge billions of additional dollars in humanitarian and military aid through the summer.
“We need to be prepared for the long term,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said late Thursday after President Joe Biden announced that he would ask Congress to approve $33 billion in new aid to Kyiv.
“There is absolutely the possibility that this war will drag on and last for months and years,” Stoltenberg said.
The British government said Friday that it would dispatch 8,000 troops over the summer to Eastern Europe for extended exercises to deter Russian aggression. The deployment is among the largest by the nation since the Cold War and will include training with thousands of troops from NATO and the Joint Expeditionary Force alliance, a group that includes Finland and Sweden, two non-NATO nations that this week were told their membership would be fast-tracked if they petitioned to join.
Britain also said Friday that it would send war crimes investigators to Ukraine, following reports of rape by Russian troops, the discovery of mass graves outside Kyiv and reports of additional mass burials outside Mariupol, a heavily bombarded southern city nearly under full Russian control.
“Russia has brought barbarity to Ukraine and committed vile atrocities, including against women. British expertise will help uncover the truth and hold [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s regime to account for its actions. Justice will be done,” said British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
As Kyiv cleaned up the aftermath of missiles that hit a commercial and residential neighborhood northwest of the presidential office, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that a body had been recovered from the rubble.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S.-funded news organization, said one of its workers, Vira Hyrych, was killed.
A former U.S. Marine from Tennessee has also died in the conflict while fighting in Ukraine with a military contracting company, his family told CNN. “He wanted to go over because he believed in what Ukraine was fighting for,” Rebecca Cabrera said of her 22-year-old son, Willy Joseph Cancel.
In Mariupol, where authorities said 600 people — a mix of military and civilians — were surrounded by Russians in a vast steelworks that is Ukraine’s last holdout in the once-thriving city, another attempt at an evacuation was announced Friday. Several previous attempts to transport Ukrainians out of the Azovstal plant, including Russian offers to allow safe passage, have not materialized.
Speaking at a video news conference, Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said that “if Mariupol is hell, Azovstal is worse.” He said those trapped were “begging to be saved.”
Boychenko said his city was “destroyed” but denied that it had fallen to Russia. “Mariupol is holding,” he said.
Fighting continued to rage in the east, along a 300-mile battlefront in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where Ukrainians and Russians have traded increasingly heavy fire for weeks as locally organized humanitarian efforts distribute basic supplies to fleeing populations.
In Sumy, near the Russia border, officials said there were multiple rounds of shelling Friday morning but did not report deaths or injuries.
In Russia, authorities reported shelling in Kursk and Bryansk, two border regions, and blamed fire from Ukraine. Kyiv did not claim responsibility for the shelling, but an advisor to Zelenskyy said this week that Ukraine reserved the right to hit “warehouses and bases of the killers in Russia,” an assertion that U.S. and British leaders have echoed.
West of the front lines, in Dnipro, Ukrainian fighter jets flew over farmlands Friday as workers planted zucchini and cabbage in the fields. Air-raid sirens went off regularly in city, where buses and everyday life seemed to go on without great interruption.
Sirens also sounded overnight in Lviv, the western city near the Polish border that has become a major transit point for millions of refugees, though no explosions could be heard. In the morning, the streets were full of traffic and people clustered at coffee kiosks.
The Lviv area, which has been mostly spared from violence but has been the site of deadly missile attacks a few times since March, is now home to 335,000 internally displaced Ukrainians, Mayor Maksym Kozytsky said Friday on Telegram. Overall, more than 8 million Ukrainians have been displaced within the country’s borders and upwards of 5 million have fled abroad.
In his Telegram message, Kozytsky urged residents to stay calm. “Have a nice day everyone! Everything will be fine,” he said.
In Odesa, near the Moldova border, locals said their sense of safety had been punctured in recent days after attacks severed the Zatoka Bridge, a vital road and railway connection. . Officials said that three missiles were shot down overnight in the area.
The attacks, along with increased fears of the war extending to Transnistria, a breakaway Russia-backed region also known as Trans-Dniester that is sandwiched between Odesa and Moldova, left many people feeling tense, said Vladislav Davidzon.
Davidzon, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council who comes from Odesa and lives there intermittently, added that the local government scheduled a full-day curfew for Monday, the anniversary of 2014 clashes between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russia activists. Rallies are held to commemorate the day each year.
“The city authorities are trying their best to make sure the situation doesn’t explode,” he said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department said it was aware of reports of the death of Cancel, the former Marine, but had no comment because of “privacy considerations.”
Cabrera, Cancel’s mother, told CNN that her son had flown into Poland on March 12 and then crossed into Ukraine. He was killed Monday, she said.
“They haven’t found his body. They are trying, the men that were with him, but it was either grab his body or get killed,” Cabrera said. “We would love for him to come back to us.”
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(King reported from Lviv, Bulos from Odesa and Kaleem from London. Staff writer Carolyn Cole contributed reporting from Dnipro, Ukraine.)
