KHARKIV, Ukraine — As Russian troops closed in on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Friday in Europe’s largest ground conflict since World War II, leaders of the besieged nation urged their citizens to fight back.
“Make Molotov cocktails, neutralize the occupier!” the Ukrainian Border Guard implored on Facebook, warning that Russian troops had advanced on the suburbs of Kyiv.
A top Pentagon official offered words of encouragement to Ukraine, telling journalists that the invasion was not advancing as quickly as expected thanks in part to a spirited defense by Ukraine’s air force. Still, as military and civilian deaths mounted, and explosions and air-raid sirens sounded, there was a deepening awareness in Ukraine that nobody was coming to help.
“We are defending our country alone,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a solemn video address in which he ordered men of fighting age to stay in the country and arm a resistance.
Zelenskyy slammed sanctions levied by the West against Russia as insufficient, and warned that unless world leaders do more to stop the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin would continue his aggression.
“If you don’t help us now, if you fail to offer a powerful assistance to Ukraine, tomorrow the war will knock on your door,” said Zelenskyy, a former comedic actor who has transformed, overnight, into a wartime leader.
The White House said President Joe Biden and Zelenskyy spoke for nearly 40 minutes on Friday. After the call, Zelenskyy suggested that Biden had promised further sanctions and new aid, tweeting: “Strengthening sanctions, concrete defense assistance and an anti-war coalition have just been discussed.”
A statement from NATO said its leaders have agreed to send rapid-response troops to protect allies near Russia and Ukraine. “We have deployed defensive land and air forces in the eastern part of the Alliance, and maritime assets across the NATO area,” said the statement, which added that the alliance would “continue to take all measures and decisions required to ensure the security and defense of all Allies.”
On the second day of its large-scale assault on Ukraine — part of Putin’s dream of stitching back together remnants of the former Soviet Union — the Kremlin said Friday it was ready for talks, but only once the Ukrainian army laid down arms.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov insisted at a briefing that Russia does not intend “to oppress” the Ukrainian people and said they should have “a chance to decide their future.”
Zelenskyy, who has repeatedly said that he would not accept a Ukraine under Russia’s thumb, has offered to negotiate on one of Putin’s key demands: that Ukraine declare itself neutral and abandon its ambition of joining NATO. The goal of membership in the trans-Atlantic military alliance is enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution. The Kremlin said Friday that Russia was ready to send a delegation to Belarus to discuss that point.
Russia’s offer of dialogue led some to question whether it had begun to doubt its ability to quickly seize control of Ukraine.
A senior Pentagon official said he believed the Russians had “lost a little bit of their momentum” in their invasion, noting in a briefing to journalists that Russia had not yet captured any major Ukrainian cities or achieved air superiority over Ukraine, and that Ukraine’s communications and media systems remained intact.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said about one-third of the roughly 190,000 troops that Russia assembled before the invasion are now in Ukraine, and that Russia’s full cyberattack capabilities haven’t been seen yet.
The official said the U.S. has indications that Russia is now conducting an amphibious assault west of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov. “They are putting potentially thousands of naval infantry ashore there,” he said.
In the meantime, Russian troops continued their assault in other parts of Ukraine, hitting strategic military sites but also civilian targets.
In a Kyiv apartment building, residents woke to plumes of smoke and screaming — the result, according to the city’s mayor, of Russian shelling.
“What are you doing? What is this?” asked a dazed survivor, Yurii Zhyhanov, according to The Associated Press. As tens of thousands of his compatriots have already done, he quickly gathered his belongings to flee the city with his mother.
“The enemy wants to bring the capital and us to our knees,” said Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko, adding that Russian saboteurs had already infiltrated the city. Authorities said Friday that some 18,000 guns along with ammunition were distributed to reserve fighters in Kyiv.
Russia’s military said it had seized a strategic airport near Kyiv, which would allow it to rapidly build up forces to take the capital.
It said it had already cut off the city from the west — the direction in which many of those escaping the invasion were heading. Lines of cars sat snarled in traffic as the sun went down Friday, trying to make their way toward the Polish border.
United Nations officials reported at least 25 civilian deaths, and said that at least 100,000 people have fled their homes. The U.N. has warned that some 4 million Ukrainians could flee the country if the fighting escalates, which would represent a refugee crisis in Europe not seen since 2015, when millions arrived there after escaping the Syrian civil war.
Zelenskyy said in an address late Thursday that 137 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the first day of fighting, along with 316 wounded.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar gave a tally of Russian losses. As of Friday afternoon, she said, the Russian army had lost up to 80 tanks, hundreds of armored combat vehicles, 10 warplanes and seven helicopters. The figures could not be independently verified. Moscow has not issued a toll of losses.
The pyrotechnics over Kyiv were largely absent in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-most populous city.
In the morning, residents cautiously emerged from the underground subway stations where they had taken shelter, making their way along mostly empty streets amid a snowstorm. Even the buses were still running.
It wasn’t until slightly before noon that the sounds of explosions reverberated through the city center, sending pedestrians scurrying for shelter while motorists attempted to escape from a threat they could only hear but could not see.
One of the last remaining staff members at a hotel in Kharkiv said he intended to stay. Alexander, a 24-year-old waiter who declined to give his last name, seemed resigned to the Russian invasion to come.
“Why would I go?” he said. “This is my country.
“America isn’t here. The European Union isn’t here,” he said. “So we’re fighting on our own.”
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(Bulos reported from Kharkiv and Linthicum from Mexico City. Times staffer Anumita Kaur in Washington contributed to this report.)
