These attacks and others scattered across the country were an explosive reminder to Ukrainians and their Western backers that the whole country remains under threat. With the port city of Mariupol under siege, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia was “deliberately trying to destroy everyone there.” He said Ukraine needed more heavy weapons than the West immediately to have any chance of saving the city. Every day brings new discoveries of civilians victims of an invasion that has shaken European security. In towns and villages just outside Kyiv, authorities said they had found the bodies of more than 900 civilians, most of them shot dead, since Russian troops withdrew two weeks ago.

Russia has pledged to intensify its missile strikes on Kyiv

After the humiliating loss of the Black Sea Fleet flagship, the Russian military administration promised to intensify rocket attacks on the capital. The Russians said they had hit an armored vehicle factory on Saturday, a day after targeting a rocket factory. Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko advised residents who left the city earlier in the war not to return. “We do not rule out further strikes in the capital,” he said. “If you have the opportunity to stay a little longer in cities where it is safer, do it.” Partizan supporters wave a Serbian flag with the letter Z during a Serbian SuperLiga playoff match in Belgrade on Saturday. The “Z” has become a symbol of support for Russian military action in Ukraine. (Andrej Isakovic / AFP / Getty Images)
The mayor said Saturday’s strike killed one person and injured several others. It was not immediately clear from the ground what hit the strike in the Darnytskyi district of Kiev. The large area at the southeastern tip of the capital contains a mix of Soviet-style apartment buildings, newer shopping malls and large retail stores, industrial areas and railway facilities. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the target was an armored factory. He did not specify where the plant was located, but there is one in the Darnytskyi area. He said the plant was among several Ukrainian military sites hit by “high-precision long-range air weapons”.

Attacks in 8 areas

Russian missiles hit the city as residents went for walks, foreign embassies planned to reopen, and other signs of the city’s pre-war life began to reappear after Russian troops failed to occupy Kyiv and their territory. Kyiv was one of the many targets on Saturday. The office of the Ukrainian president reported rocket attacks and bombings in the last 24 hours in eight areas across the country. The governor of the Lviv region in western Ukraine, which has only been sporadically touched by the violence of the war, reported airstrikes in the region by Russian Su-35 aircraft taking off from neighboring Belarus. In northeastern Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said three people were killed and 34 injured Saturday. An explosion believed to have been caused by a rocket sent by rescuers running near a flea market. One person was said to have been killed and at least 18 injured. “All the windows, all the furniture, all damaged. And the door too,” said resident Valentina Ulianova in surprise. The previous day, rockets hit a residential area of ​​Kharkiv, killing a 15-year-old boy, an infant and at least eight other people, officials said.

Putin “in his own war logic”

Nate Mook, a member of the NGO World Central Kitchen run by the famous chef José Andrés, tweeted that four workers in Kharkov were injured in a strike. Andrés wrote on Twitter that the staff members were anxious but safe. Austrian Chancellor Carl Nehammer, who met with Vladimir Putin last week in Moscow – the first European leader to do so since the invasion began on February 24 – said the Russian president was “in his own war logic” about Ukraine. In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Nehammer said he believed Putin believed he was winning the war and “we have to look him in the eye and face him, what we see in Ukraine.” Members of the Ukrainian army walk among the rubble after a shopping mall and surrounding buildings were hit by a Russian missile strike on Saturday in Kharkov, Ukraine. (Chris McGrath / Getty Images)
Nehammer said he confronted Putin with what he saw during a visit to the Kiev suburb of Bucha, where more than 350 bodies were found along with evidence of Russian-occupied killings and torture, and “it was not a friendly conversation.” Zelensky told Ukrainian journalists that the ongoing siege of Mariupol, which has cost the trapped and starving civilians dearly, could thwart negotiations to end the war. “Destroying all our guys in Mariupol – what they are doing now – can put an end to any form of negotiation,” he said.

Russia endures Mariupol

Later, in his nightly video address to the nation, Zelensky said Ukraine needed more support from the West to have a chance to save Mariupol. “Either our partners give Ukraine all the necessary heavy weapons, the planes and without exaggeration immediately, so that we can reduce the pressure of the occupiers in Mariupol and break the blockade,” he said, “or we will do it through negotiations. that the role of our partners must be decisive “. Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had been driven out of most of the city and remained only in the huge Azovstal steel plant. Russian Lieutenant General. Vladimir Frolov, whose troops were among those besieging Mariupol, was buried in St Petersburg on Saturday after he died in battle, Governor Alexander Beglov said. Ukraine has said several Russian generals and dozens of other high-ranking officers have been killed in the war. The occupation of Mariupol will allow Russian forces in the south, which came through the annexed Crimean peninsula, to fully connect with troops in the Donbas region, the eastern industrial heart of Ukraine. Zelensky estimated that 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the war and that about 10,000 had been wounded. The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine announced on Saturday that at least 200 children were killed and more than 360 were injured. Nadiya Trubchaninova, 70, weeps as she holds the coffin of her son Vadym, 48, who was killed by Russian soldiers last March 30 on March 30 in Bucha during his funeral at Mykulychi Cemetery on the outskirts of Kiev on Saturday. (Rodrigo Abd / The Associated Press)
Russian forces have also captured about 700 Ukrainian soldiers and more than 1,000 civilians, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk said on Saturday. Ukraine holds about the same number of Russian troops as prisoners and intends to arrange an exchange, but demands the “unconditional” release of civilians, he said. Russia has warned of escalating attacks in Kyiv after accusing Ukraine on Thursday of injuring seven people and damaging about 100 residential buildings with airstrikes in Bryansk, an area bordering Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have not confirmed that they hit targets in Russia. In the Vatican, Pope Francis on Saturday invoked “peace gestures these days marked by the horrors of war” at an Easter vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica, attended by the mayor of the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol and three members of the . Francis did not refer directly to the Russian invasion, but called, apparently in vain, for an Easter truce to achieve peace through negotiations.