Russian airstrikes hit three cities
in Ukraine on Friday – including two in the country’s west – as the
scope of its military offensive widened.
The raids hit airfields in Lutsk and
Ivano-Frankivsk, far from the main areas of conflict, and residential buildings
in the strategically important city of Dnipro, which sits on the Dnieper River.
The air raids came as new satellite
imagery from Maxar Technologies showed that a 40-mile convoy that had been
approaching the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, had dispersed as tanks and artillery
moved to what appeared to be firing positions to the north-west of the city.
The Ukrainian military said Russia was trying to
“block” Kyiv by taking out defenses to the west and north of the capital,
adding that there was also a risk to Brovary on the east.
As the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko,
said that about 2 million people, half the population of the metropolitan area,
had left the capital, preparations continued for its defense. “Every street,
every house is being fortified,” he said.
“Even people who in their lives never
intended to change their clothes, now they are in uniform with machine guns in their
hands.”
Ukrainian soldiers described fierce
fighting for control of the main highway leading into the capital, while
missile strikes were reported hitting Velyka Dymerka just outside Kyiv’s city
limits.
“It’s
frightening, but what can you do?” said Vasil Popov, a 38-year-old who works in
advertising sales. “There is nowhere to really run or hide. We live here.”
Despite
heavy losses of personnel and equipment in the third week of Russia’s brutal
assault on Ukraine – in which cities have been placed under siege and subjected
to bombardment – Vladimir Putin’s forces were pushing ahead with their
campaign.
The
Russian defense ministry spokesperson, Igor Konashenkov, said Russia used
high-precision long-range weapons on Friday to put military airfields in Lutsk
and Ivano-Frankivsk “out of action”.
The
airstrike on the Lutsk military airfield early on Friday left two members of
the Ukrainian forces dead and six people wounded, according to the head of the
surrounding Volyn region, Yuriy Pohulyayko.
Images of the
aftermath showed what appeared to be a massive explosion that set fire to what
looked like fuel storage tanks and cratered the runway.
Lutsk
residents said they were woken at 6.45am on Friday when four Russian rockets
hit the city’s military aerodrome.
One said:
“We live 2km away. The rockets woke us up. We had been living in Kharkiv and
left the city last week. The Russians bombard Kharkiv 100 times a day. Compared
to that, this wasn’t as bad.”
The
strikes also targeted an airport near Ivano-Frankivsk, where residents were
ordered to shelters after an air raid alert, the mayor, Ruslan Martsinkiv,
said.
Three
Russian airstrikes also hit the eastern industrial city of Dnipro early on
Friday, killing at least one person, according to the Ukrainian interior
ministry adviser, Anton Heraschenko. They hit an area near a chemical plant,
leaving a shoe factory completely destroyed, and breaking the windows on a
nearby kindergarten.
The new
wave of strikes came as clear skies on Friday made Russian air operations easier.
Despite
claiming to have “neutralized” the Ukrainian air forces and air defenses in the
first few days of the war, in the last week Russia has hit Ukrainian airforce
sites a number of times, including striking an airfield in Vinnytsia – the city
that is the headquarters of the Ukrainian airforce – with eight cruise missiles
in a single attack.
The focus
on Ukraine’s air assets appears to be part of a continuing effort by Russia to
gain uncontested control of the air, which it has so far failed to achieve, but
which would allow more air support to forces on the ground.
The latest
strikes came amid contradictory assessments of Russian progress around Kyiv,
with the Ukraine general staff saying the Russian advance had been halted and
the Pentagon suggesting that it had moved forward about 3 miles in the
northwest.
The
satellite photos of Russian concentrations around Kyiv, meanwhile, appeared to
show a massive convoy previously detected outside the Ukrainian capital had
fanned out into towns and forests near the city with artillery pieces raised
for firing, in another potentially ominous movement.
A US defense official speaking on
condition of anonymity said Russian forces moving toward Kyiv had advanced
about 3 miles (5km) in the past 24 hours, with some elements as close as about
nine miles from the city.
It appeared the convoy forces were moving
west around the city, trying to encircle it to the south, according to Jack
Watling, a research fellow at British defense think tank the Royal United
Services Institute.
“They’re about halfway around now, to be
able to close off on the south,” he told BBC radio. He added they were likely
preparing for a “siege rather than assault” on Kyiv because of continuing low
morale and logistical problems.
While a move to a more static approach of
shelling Kyiv from outside might be less costly for Russian forces in the first
instance, it is not without risk.
The Ukrainian use of Turkish-supplied
combat drones has been effective against Russian vehicles, and more static
positions would be vulnerable to other Ukrainian aircraft, perhaps explaining
the recent stepped-up effort to knock Ukrainian airfields.
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