KYIV, Ukraine — Under incongruously bright skies, Ukrainian forces fought fiercely Saturday to protect and maintain control of their country’s capital from Russian troops as sporadic explosions and gunfire shook parts of the city and an apartment tower took a direct hit from a shell.
Ukraine’s outgunned military desperately tried to fend off an advance by invading forces on Kyiv’s northern outskirts. Skirmishes were reported in other parts of the beleaguered city. Shops were closed, nervous reservists clutched battered AK-47s in the streets and makeshift checkpoints made of piled-up tires sprang up to slow any Russian infiltration.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to rally his compatriots, appearing in a video shot on a Kyiv street to demonstrate that he had not abandoned the city and to urge Ukrainians to resist.
“We aren’t going to lay down weapons. We will protect the country,” Zelenskyy said. “It’s our land, our country, our children. And we will defend all of that.”
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have already fled west, some crossing into Poland and Romania, but thousands have also responded to Zelenskyy’s call to take up arms to push back against the Russian blitz in what is Europe’s biggest ground war since World War II.
Over the last 24 hours, Ukrainian forces deliberately destroyed some of Kyiv’s many bridges as a defensive tactic aimed at slowing down the incoming forces. Those that do remain standing are carefully guarded, like the Perchesky Bridge, where nervous but dour-faced soldiers popped trunks open and asked questions of motorists.
Other measures taken by Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko included imposing a strict citywide curfew that would extend from 5 p.m. local time until 8 a.m. Monday morning. Klitschko said he was taking the step to counter the efforts of Russian infiltrators suspected to be already in the city.
“We remind you that all civilians who will be on the street during the curfew will be considered as members of the enemy’s sabotage and reconnaissance groups,” the order stated.
On Kyiv’s Lobanovsky Avenue, a shell slammed into an apartment block about 8 a.m. Saturday, obliterating a chunk of the building between the 16th and 21st floors and wounding six people, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Rescuers agency said. Glass, hunks of cement and personal belongings from the destroyed units carpeted the boulevard below.
About 80 people were evacuated from the tower, which also houses a travel agency, a sushi restaurant and a gym. The exploded round turned a 16th-floor apartment into a smoke-filled maw of distressed masonry and rebar; on the 18th floor, a wall dangled and swung gently in the wind like a cement curtain.
It was the latest in the tally of civilian targets hit by Russian forces, despite Moscow’s insistence that its troops have aimed their massive firepower only at military installations.
“I don’t sleep these days, so I was awake beside my wife — she’s nine months pregnant — and reading the news when I heard this huge bang and the building shook,” said Eugene Limar, a 31-year-old programmer who lived on the 22nd floor. He was rushing down the stairs with two suitcases in hand, barely pausing a moment to speak to a reporter.
“I just dumped everything in these bags and we’re leaving,” he said.
Moments after he spoke, a fusillade of shots rang out in the distance, causing passersby to scurry for cover. A black column of smoke rose a small distance away to the north.
The Kremlin, which claimed to have suspended operations Friday as it considered talks with Ukrainian leadership, said Saturday that it had resumed attacks, according to Russian state news operator TASS. In the report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said attacks would continue because the “Ukrainian side refused to negotiate.”
Three days into their large-scale assault by air, land and sea, Russian forces are apparently trying to encircle Kyiv in a campaign to depose Zelenskyy’s democratically elected government and install a pliant regime. Besides the capital, other major Ukrainian cities, including Kharkiv in the northeast, have come under attack from a military of vastly superior numbers and weaponry. Russian forces have also mounted deadly air and missile strikes from the north, east and south.
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy has become an international icon overnight for his resistance to Russia. In a tweet posted Saturday, the Ukrainian embassy in the U.K. said Zelenskyy had refused a U.S. offer to be evacuated. “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,” read the post, quoting Zelensky. The U.S. has not confirmed the offer or the exchange.
Nearly 200 people have been killed and more than 1,000 wounded since the offensive began, Ukraine’s health minister said Saturday. A senior American defense official told reporters Saturday that Russia has launched more than 250 missile attacks. Most have been short-range ballistic missiles. Russia has not issued any casualty figures.
Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov, who heads Russia’s Chechnya region, said in a video uploaded Saturday that Chechen units were deployed to Ukraine and had taken territory with no casualties. “Some people say that many of our fighters were killed. To date, we have not a single loss, not a single wounded person, and not even a scratch,” he said in a TASS report Saturday.
The U.S., the European Union and other allies, including Japan and Australia, have imposed sanctions that they say will inflict heavy damage on Russia’s economy. Some countries have also shipped arms to Ukraine to aid it in its effort to remain an independent nation.
On Saturday, the Pentagon announced that President Joe Biden had authorized an additional $350 million in military assistance to Ukraine, some of it earmarked for anti-armor and other munitions and equipment.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the extra aid was “a sign of our unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Also on Saturday, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said they would close airspace to Russian airlines, according to the Associated Press. No date was given for when the closure would happen. In a tweet, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said, “there is no place for planes of the aggressor state in democratic skies.”
At the same time, it is clear to Ukrainians that the actual fight — and the blood to be shed defending their homeland — is theirs alone.
“America isn’t here. The European Union isn’t here,” said Alexander, a 24-year-old hotel employee in Kharkiv who declined to give his last name. “So we’re fighting on our own.”
In Kyiv, Mayor Klitschko, a former boxing champion, vowed to stay and defend his city.
“The enemy wants to bring the capital and us to our knees,” Klitschko said. “I believe in Ukraine, I believe in my country and I believe in my people.”
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(Bulos reported from Kyiv, Chu from London and Kaleem from Los Angeles. Laura Wides-Muñoz contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.)
