A12 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 , 2022
russia invades ukraineOfficials say Moscow has now
pushed into Ukraine more than
80 percent of the combat power it
staged within Russian border ar-
eas and in neighboring Belarus in
recent months, demonstrating
Putin’s determination to cripple a
Western-backed government
that he maintains has under-
mined Russian security.
Ukraine has refused to for-
swear its right to join the NATO
military alliance, a proposition
Putin has described as a red line.
The conflict has triggered suc-
cessive rounds of international
sanctions against Russia, includ-
ing measures targeting its central
bank and access to the global
financial system. European na-
tions have united in opposition to
Putin’s actions, with some coun-
tries reversing long-standing pol-
icies so they can provide military
support to Ukraine.
Perhaps most ominously, the
invasion raised the specter of a
military confrontation between
NATO and Russia, a nation with a
massive conventional force and
nuclear arsenal. That possibility
seemed unthinkable as recently
as last month.
The massive, albeit apparently
stalled, military column appears
to aim straight for the seat of
Ukraine’s government. Fierce
fighting and shelling has contin-
ued in different areas across the
country, with Russia appearing
to embrace the use of less accu-
rate weapons, including multiple
rocket launcher systems that can
be used to launch thermobaric
rockets, or vacuum bombs, U.S.
officials said.
In Kyiv, volunteers and sol-
diers have dug trenches and as-
sembled barricades, staging anti-
aircraft guns and antitank rock-
ets in the streets ahead of what
promises to be a punishing urban
battle. More than 600,000 people
have already fled Ukraine,
searching for safety in Poland
and other neighboring countries,
while many who remain in Kyiv
have sought shelter in basements
and subway stations.
The government of President
Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed
that Ukrainians will not yield to
Russian firepower, and he has
called for additional Western
aid. The flow of weaponry in-
creased this week when Ger-
many opened its stockpiles and
even studiously neutral Finland
agreed to chip in.
Russian and Ukrainian offi-
cials failed to make any progress
in initial peace talks at the Belar-
usian border on Monday.
Zelensky spoke with President
Biden on Tuesday hours before
his State of the Union speech,
which was expected to highlight
his administration’s efforts to
confront Russian aggression.
Biden has ruled out sending U.S.
forces to fight in Ukraine, but
officials say military and humani-
tarian aid will continue.
On Tuesday, Zelensky and his
chief of staff reported that a
Russian airstrike apparently
aimed at a TV tower had hit
Babyn Yar, a vast Holocaust me-
morial in Kyiv that marks the site
of a 1941 massacre that left tens of
thousands of people dead.
At least five people were killed,
officials said. Footage of the
strike’s aftermath, obtained by
The Washington Post, showed a
chaotic scene with cars and
buildings blown out and at least
four bodies on fire. Firefighters
rushed to extinguish the flames.
“What is the point of saying
‘never again’ for 80 years, if the
world stays silent when a bomb
drops on the same site of Babyn
Yar?” Zelensky tweeted. “At least
5 killed. History repeating.. .”
Russian leaders yielded no
ground on Tuesday, as Defense
Minister Sergei Shoigu vowed the
operation would continue until
the Kremlin’s aims were accom-
plished, and Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of
planning to obtain nuclear weap-
ons.
The Kremlin has denied tar-
geting civilians and accused
Ukrainian forces of using human
shields.
Western officials said that par-
ticularly fierce fighting contin-
ued in the northeastern city of
Kharkiv, a predominantly Rus-
sian-speaking city some 25 miles
from the border. A missile struck
a regional government building,
triggering a massive explosion.
Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the
city’s opera and ballet theater
were also hit in Russian attacks.
He also said residential neighbor-
hoods had been shelled with
what local officials suspected
were cluster munitions, fanning
fears that Moscow might again
employ tactics like those that
proved deadly for civilians in
Chechnya and Syria.
Terekhov said the fighting had
UKRAINE FROM A
President Alexander Lukashen-
ko, a close Putin ally, called for
Russia to bring more Russian
S-400 air defenses to his country,
Interfax reported. Russian forces
have poured into Ukraine from
Belarus, which hosted joint mili-
tary exercises with Russia in the
weeks before Putin’s assault.
Last month, Belarus approved
a referendum abandoning the
country’s status as a nonnuclear
state. Lukashenko has raised the
idea of moving Russian nuclear
equipment into Belarus.
The newly levied economic
sanctions, which targeted Putin
and his top lieutenants, are al-
ready taking a withering toll on
the Russian economy, sending
the ruble tumbling and the gov-
ernment scrambling to raise in-
terest rates. Around the world,
companies have announced they
will suspend business in Russia.
A global movement to ban sales
of Russian vodka is gaining
steam.
While the sanctions have not
so far targeted Russia’s oil and
gas sector, the conflict is expected
to disrupt supplies through
Ukraine and the Black Sea. To
help mitigate potential surges in
energy prices, the United States
and other nations will release
60 million barrels of oil from
their reserves to boost global
supplies, the International En-
ergy Agency said on Tuesday, the
fourth time the organization has
overseen such a move since its
establishment in 1974.
Ukraine’s government, mean-
while, issued war bonds as it
seeks to fund its military re-
sponse, raising the equivalent of
$277 million, officials said.
At the United Nations, diplo-
mats continued to debate a reso-
lution that would call for Russia
to withdraw its troops and re-
verse its recognition of separatist
areas in eastern Ukraine. While
the resolution is nonbinding, the
resolution, if adopted by the Gen-
eral Assembly, would represent a
sign of global opprobrium.
At a separate session of the
U.N. Human Rights Council in
Geneva, dozens of U.S. and Euro-
pean diplomats walked out dur-
ing remarks that Lavrov made by
video link.
In his own video address to the
council, U.S. Secretary of State
Antony Blinken condemned the
Ukraine operation, which he said
had struck schools, hospitals,
ambulances, and infrastructure
that “provides millions of people
across Ukraine with drinking wa-
ter, gas to keep them from freez-
ing to death, and electricity.”
“People in Ukraine and around
the world are looking to us to
stand up and stand together,”
Blinken said. “We must not let
them down.”Ryan and Lamothe reported from
Washington. Sudarsan Raghavan,
Siobhán O’Grady, Whitney Shefte
and Kostiantyn Khudov in Kyiv; David
Stern in Mukachevo, Ukraine; Karla
Adam in London; and John Hudson
and Tyler Pager in Washington
contributed to this report.Russian strikes intensify as battle for the capital awaits
SERGI MYKHALCHUK
The aftermath of an airstrike on a TV tower in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday. Ukrainian leaders said the strike hit Babyn Yar, a vast Holocaust memorial that marks the site of a
1941 massacre that left tens of thousands of people dead. At least five people were killed, officials said.impeded the arrival of food and
medical supplies in Kharkiv, and
artillery had struck transformer
stations, leaving much of the city
without power. Local authorities
were hanging on, he said, but
were surrounded by Russian
forces.
“This is very serious, and peo-
ple are in a state of shock because
they could have never thought
this would happen,” the mayor
said in a phone interview.
Across the street from the
Kharkiv government building, a
tent used by activists with the
Euromaidan movement, which
advocates closer Ukrainian ties
with Europe instead of Russia,
was also struck by a missile and
destroyed, said Boris Redin, an
activist with the movement.He said the strikes killed resi-
dents who were driving or walk-
ing nearby.
In southern Ukraine, Russia
has occupied Berdyansk and tak-
en possession of Melitopol, a city
of about 150,000. Russian forces
remain outside the major south-
ern city of Mariupol, but are close
enough to attack it with artillery
and other long-range weapons,
the U.S. defense official said.
Russian and local forces were
battling over the southern city of
Kherson, whose mayor, Ihor
Kolykhaiev, warned residents in
a Facebook post to stay indoors
and pleaded with Russian au-
thorities to spare their lives.
“We are NOT military! But I
will keep the city and its life going
as long as I can,” he wrote. “If thesoldiers of the Russian Federa-
tion and their leadership hear
me, I ask: leave our city, stop
shelling the civilian population.
You already took everything you
wanted, including human lives.
God be your judge.”
In Kyiv, people waited hours in
line for gasoline and scoured
local stores for food ahead of
what they feared would be a
similar assault to the one grip-
ping Kharkiv. A children’s hospi-
tal set up makeshift wards in a
basement shelter for cancer pa-
tients and premature babies.
China, which has refrained
from directly condemning Putin’s
operation, began a large-scale
evacuation of its citizens.
Western nations have been
quick to point to Russian stum-bles in the invasion, highlighting
what they say were failures to
back up initial assaults and
flawed assumptions about Ukrai-
nian defenses. U.S. and Ukraini-
an officials have also noted what
they say are signs that Russian
soldiers, especially young con-
scripts, were given scant infor-
mation about their mission be-
fore being sent into Ukraine to
fight.
As of Tuesday morning, Russia
had fired some 400 missiles at
Ukraine since the invasion be-
gan, up from about 380 on Mon-
day, the Pentagon said. Airspace
over Ukraine continues to be
contested, despite the massive
size advantage that the Russian
air force has, officials said.
Also on Tuesday, BelarusianSALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST
People take shelter in Dnipro. The city, farther inland from the Russian border, has remained relatively safe from Russia’s assault, for now.WOJCIECH GRZEDZINSKI FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Employees of a museum in Lviv install metal plates over windows
in an effort to protect the building.HEIDI LEVINE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
A member of a Ukrainian territorial defense unit in a Kyiv bunker.
Russia appeared to escalate its strikes on residential areas Tuesday.