Russian troops enter Kyiv as Moscow pushes to topple Ukraine’s government
“It is important that everyone is strong in spirit. This is our land. We will not hand it over.”
The Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was under bombardment on Friday morning, with missile strikes and a rocket crashing into a residential building as the second day of Russia’s military offensive pressed closer to the heart of the government.
Ukrainian forces were battling Russian troops on the outskirts of Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million people, where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned in a television address that he was “target No. 1” of the Russian advance.
By midmorning, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said that Russian forces had entered the Obolon district, a few miles north of central Kyiv, and urged people in the capital to stay indoors. In a sign of the potentially chaotic fight that could unfold, the ministry said on Facebook that Kyiv residents should “prepare Molotov cocktails” to deter “the occupier.”
Zelenskyy said that 137 Ukrainians, military and civilian, had been killed in the Russian invasion that began Thursday morning, and that Russian “sabotage groups” had entered the capital with the aim of decapitating Ukraine’s government “by destroying the head of the state.”
The 44-year-old president, appearing unshaven and in a T-shirt, called on Ukrainians to defend themselves, in absence of military help from the outside world. He said not to expect foreign military forces to come to their aid. “We are left to our own devices in defense of our state,” he said. “Who is ready to fight together with us? Honestly, I do not see such.”
A day earlier, Zelenskyy’s government had declared martial law and ordered a general mobilization, urging all able-bodied Ukrainians to sign up with the country’s defense forces. Under the mobilization, most men ages 18 to 60 are barred from leaving the country, even as many Kyiv residents sought to flee the capital via road and rail to the relative safety of western Ukraine.
“The first days are the most difficult, because right now the enemy will feel it has the advantage, or will be broken physically and morally,” Hanna Malyar, the deputy minister of defense, said Friday morning before calling on people to join the general mobilization.
“It is important that everyone is strong in spirit,” Malyar said. “This is our land. We will not hand it over.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday that its forces had seized the highly radioactive grounds surrounding the former Chernobyl nuclear plant and were working with Ukrainian guards to ensure its safety, contradicting Ukrainian claims that Russian troops were holding the plant’s personnel hostage.
A day after heavy fighting was reported in eastern Ukraine, in Moscow-backed separatist enclaves along the Russian border, the conflict appeared to be intensifying in Kyiv.
Videos verified by The New York Times showed a large explosion in the sky over the outskirts of southern Kyiv early Friday. Witnesses filmed fiery debris falling over parts of the city. The videos appeared to show at least two surface-to-air missiles being fired near Kyiv before the explosion.
Vitali Klitschko, the city’s mayor, said that a rocket fragment had hit a residential building in a civilian neighborhood, injuring three people, one of them critically, according to preliminary reports. Emergency workers were on the scene, and the house was on fire and at risk of collapsing, Klitschko said.
Ukrainian officials said that Kyiv had been under such large-scale attack only once before — in 1941, when it was attacked by Nazi Germany.
“Ukraine defeated that evil and will defeat this one,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted. “Stop Putin.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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