On the 17th day of theinvasion of Ukraine by Russia, the offensive continues, always sowing desolation. More than 2.5 million people have already fled the “senseless” war, according to the UN, leaving Ukraine and two million others have been displaced inside the country. The Russian forces continue their strategy of harassment and demoralization of the cities. From the capital, President Zelensky estimated that the conflict had “already reached a strategic turning point”. “It is impossible to say how many days we still have (ahead of us) to liberate Ukrainian land. But we can say we will,” he said, calling on Russian mothers to “not send (their) children to war”.
Already explosions in Kiev
Explosions were heard in the early hours of Saturday as the capital has been under pressure for more than two weeks and Russian forces are positioned around Kiev. But Moscow thought to take the capital in a flash, thanks to the tens of thousands of soldiers deployed. Satellite images showed them on friday firing artillery as they advanced on Kiev, houses were on fire.
“Fighting northwest of Kiev continues with the bulk of Russian ground forces about 25 kilometers from the center of the city,” the British Ministry of Armed Forces said on Saturday morning. “Elements of the large Russian column north of Kiev have dispersed. This is likely to support a Russian attempt to encircle the city. It could also be an attempt by Russia to reduce its vulnerability to Ukrainian counterattacks, which have taken a heavy toll on Russian forces.”
Moschun, a city northwest of Kiev, continues to be targeted, and fires are declared at Hostomel airport, 75 km from the center of the capital. Similarly, the Ukrainian services released photos, in the early morning, of refrigerated warehouses on fire in Kvitneve, barely 30 km from the historic heart of Kiev. They were targeted by Russian strikes at 3:30 a.m. (2:30 a.m. French time). There were no casualties, but the food they contained was all destroyed.
Mayor of Melitopol taken prisoner
Ivan Fedorov has been “kidnapped”, President Zelensky denounced late Friday evening. CCTV footage shared by presidential office officials shows about a dozen armed men escorting a man out of a downtown building. The mayor was at the crisis center to manage the supply of the city of Zaporozhye. Ukraine’s parliament said a bag had been placed on the mayor’s head, while the foreign ministry warned the kidnapping constituted a war crime.
“The capture of the mayor of Melitopol is therefore a crime, not only against a particular person, against a particular community, and not only against Ukraine. It is a crime against democracy as such (…). The acts of the Russian invaders will be equated with those of the terrorists of the Islamic State”, indignantly Volodymyr Zelensky.
This Saturday morning, several hundred residents gathered in front of the town hall occupied by the Russians to demand the release of the mayor.
Second day of shelling on Dnipro
Air attack sirens sounded at 5:25 a.m. local time (4:25 a.m. French time) in Dnipro this Saturday, in central Ukraine, and continue to sound. CNN reporters felt at least two explosions, smoke and remnants of anti-aircraft fire. Dnipro was targeted by three strikes early on Friday, which hit a school, an apartment building and a shoe factory. A civilian was killed. In Lutsk and Chernihiv, a football stadium and a library were hit.
Anti-aircraft sirens are sounding everywhere
1h40 without stopping in Odessa, tweeted the French journalist Vanessa Descouraux. The sirens also alerted of the imminence of an attack in Kiev, Lviv, Kharkiv, Cherkassy, as well as in the Sumy region.
A district of Mykolaiv shelled, hospitals bombarded
The port city of Mykolaiv, near Odessa, was bombarded relentlessly overnight from Friday to Saturday, the shots hitting a cancer care center and an eye hospital in particular, noted an AFP journalist. “They fired on these civilian areas, without any military objective. Here there is a hospital, an orphanage, an ophthalmological center”, all located in the Ingoulski district in the north of the city, indicated Dmytro Lagotchev, head of the hospital.
At the time of the strikes, no patient or caregiver was in the cancer center. But the ophthalmological hospital housed an unspecified number of patients. “We spent the whole night in the basement, everything was shaking, the patients were terrified,” said its director, Kasimira Rilkova.