The Russian military is continuing to advance on Kyiv in what a senior U.S. defense official has called an apparent attempt to encircle the Ukrainian capital, fueling concerns the Kremlin will adopt the same siege tactics there that have been seen in Kharkiv — the country’s second-largest city — which was bombarded Monday with some of the heaviest shelling since the invasion began.
Five hours of talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations near the Belarus border Monday failed to yield a breakthrough, with the two sides agreeing only to continue their discussions in coming days. Meanwhile, satellite images showed a massive convoy of Russian ground forces making its way toward Kyiv, drawing within 20 miles of the center of the capital on Monday.
Ukrainian officials say at least 11 people were killed and dozens hospitalized in Kharkiv, home to 1.5 million people, after Russia launched rocket strikes on Monday morning. Suspected cluster munitions struck buildings in residential parts of the city, raising fears that as Russia escalates attacks in urban areas it could use tactics similar to those it used in Chechnya and Syria, where it has been accused of widespread wartime abuses.
Here’s what to know
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a video posted late Monday, called the shelling of Kharkiv a “war crime” and the “deliberate destruction of people” in areas where there are no military facilities.
- Russia is careening toward an economic crisis, with the value of the ruble plunging after several nations severed the Kremlin’s access to its foreign currency reserves in the West and cut off some Russian banks from the international SWIFT financial messaging system.
- Fissures appear to be forming between Russian President Vladimir Putin and members of the oligarch class who made billions of dollars while showing fealty to the autocratic leader but now see their fortunes threatened by Western sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.
UNDERSTANDING THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE CONFLICT
What to know about Putin’s nuclear order
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered nuclear forces on alert Sunday, adding a complicated and concerning dimension to the widening conflict in Ukraine.
Experts said it was the first time the Kremlin, which has the world’s biggest nuclear stockpile, had made such an announcement since the Russian Federation was established in 1991.
U.S. officials have refused to say whether the Pentagon’s posture has changed in response to Putin’s announcement. White House press secretary Jen Psaki, speaking on MSNBC, said soon after that the United States has “the ability, of course, to defend ourselves, as does NATO” while describing Russia’s actions as an escalation to justify its actions in Ukraine.
While experts said they did not expect Putin to attempt any sort of nuclear strike on the West or a smaller-scale nuclear attack within Ukraine — where conventional Russian forces already have a major advantage — they said the fact the alert was occurring at a time when a major conflict is unfolding on NATO’s borders made it much more dangerous. Russia has nearly 6,000 warheads, slightly more than the United States’ approximately 5,400, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
“We’re in a dangerous moment. How dangerous, it’s hard to assess,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
In classified briefing, House lawmakers are told Ukraine has suffered 1,500 casualties since invasion started
House lawmakers who received a classified briefing Monday evening from senior Biden administration officials on Russia’s invasion were told that Ukraine has suffered 1,500 civilian and military casualties since the attack began, according to two people in the briefing. It was unclear whether the casualty count referred only to fatalities or included those injured as well.
The group — which included Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines — also estimated that the current phase of the conflict could last another three to four weeks before turning into an insurgency against invading Russian forces.
“Eventually, I think Russia is going to win this over, but what they win is going to be the bigger question,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) “I just don’t see how they could occupy a country that size with a resistance that strong.”
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) urged the administration to get more weapons to Ukrainian forces faster.
“Ukrainians are fighting hard and doing their end of this — we just need to get them the resupplies and munitions necessary to keep the fight going,” Crow said.
The casualty count from the House briefing differed from other publicly available numbers, but variation in such statistics is unsurprising, given the difficulty of quantifying the toll in real time as on-the-ground conditions worsen.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, for instance, reported at least 406 civilian casualties — including 102 dead — but UNHCR Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said the “real figure could be considerably higher.”
The toll, already significant for just a few days of fighting, is also expected to grow substantially in the coming days, military and intelligence experts have said.
“It’s only going to get worse,” said Angela Stent, a scholar at Georgetown University and a former intelligence official who worked on Russia issues.
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), who was born and raised in Ukraine, also said she expects the death count to rise, especially considering the heavy shelling in major cities such as Kharkiv.
“It’s likely going to be very significant loss of life,” she said, but added: “In the long run, Ukrainians are not going to surrender. Ukrainians are just not going to submit.”
Video: North of Kyiv, ordinary Ukrainians join the war effort
KYIV, Ukraine — Along a highway flowing north from the capital, lined by businesses and tall apartment buildings, the Ukrainian fighters were taking no chances. The Russians were less than an hour’s drive up the road.
By Monday evening, the Ukrainians — a mix of soldiers and volunteers — had dug deep trenches and erected barricades of giant truck tires topped with sand. At one wide intersection they positioned multiple machine guns, including a Soviet-era heavy gun, shoulder-held antitank rockets and an antiaircraft gun with its barrels pointed at the sky.
An armored personnel carrier with a cannon was covered by a green camouflage tarpaulin. And outside one building, people were making molotov cocktails by the scores. “We are going to give the Russians lots of presents,” promised Yuriy Syrotyuk, 45, a local journalist turned fighter, an AK-47 rifle slung over his shoulder.
As Ukrainian and Russian envoys held peace talks at the Belarusian border Monday, Ukrainian forces here, driven by deep mistrust of the Russians and a desire to protect their homeland, were preparing for the worst-case scenario. That scenario was Russian tanks and soldiers pressing into Kyiv and seizing the seat of government.
This highway stretching through the city’s northern Obolon district is one of the main routes by which the Russians could attack.
A visit Monday to this fortified patch, an area the Ukrainian fighters described as “their second line,” opened a window into the efforts by ordinary Ukrainians to stand up to the Russian invasion. But it also portended a violent urban conflict, with the prospect of thousands of civilians trapped in the crossfire.
Zelensky’s past as an entertainer may have prepared him for his most crucial role
The video, posted the day after Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine, is lit in sepia tones. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stands in the middle of a street in his war-rattled nation with several other Ukrainian officials.
“We are all here, defending our independence, our country. And it will stay that way,” Zelensky says in Ukrainian. “Glory to the men and women defending us. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the heroes.”
The clip, which went up Friday and has been endlessly shared, looks like something out of an action flick — particularly the version that has been overdubbed with “Shook Ones, Part II” by rap duo Mobb Deep, which has been viewed more than 6 million times. Noted one Twitter user, “I can just see the movie version of this video in my head.”
That may not be coincidental. Before Zelensky became the president of Ukraine in May 2019, he was a comedian and actor, something of an all-purpose celebrity in the country. Now, he’s become a wartime hero, a leader who refuses to flee his country despite the Russian onslaught of the capital city of Kyiv, in the biggest European conflict since World War II.
Video clips from his past life have begun circulating on social media, including his winning Ukraine’s first season of “Dancing With the Stars” and voicing Paddington Bear for the local cuts of the movies. While they might seem jarring in light of the current war, his years as an entertainer seem to have prepared him for this moment.
Suddenly welcoming, Europe opens the door to refugees fleeing Ukraine
Nations in Europe are opening the door to a historic wave of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, breaking with the continent’s past resistance to asylum seekers from the Muslim world and Africa, and embracing hundreds of thousands of new arrivals who some leaders are hailing as culturally and ethnically European.
The rapidly escalating Ukrainian wave — already more than 520,000 people, over the span of less than a week — appeared poised to dwarf the landmark European migrant crisis of 2015 and 2016, when 2 million people sought sanctuary, mostly Syrians fleeing civil war. Those arrivals sparked intense friction among European Union nations, fueled a resurgent movement of the far-right and led to backlash policies designed to stop or turn back asylum seekers.
The solidarity of current moment stands in stark contrast, particularly amid estimates that numbers could soar into the millions and potentially become the largest refugee wave on the continent of the post-World War II era.
Some leaders have been unabashed about the dramatic shift in attitudes.
“These are not the refugees we are used to … these people are Europeans,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov told journalists about the Ukrainians, as reported by the Associated Press. “These people are intelligent, they are educated people. … This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists.”
“In other words,” he added, “there is not a single European country now which is afraid of the current wave of refugees.”