UPDATE: Feb., 26, 2022 — 1:13 p.m.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden instructed the U.S. State Department to release up to an additional $350 million worth of weapons from U.S. stocks to Ukraine on Friday as it struggles to repulse a Russian invasion.
In a memorandum to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Biden directed that $350 million allocated through the Foreign Assistance Act be designated for Ukraine‘s defense.
Ukraine has been asking for Javelin anti-tank weapons and Stinger missiles to shoot down aircraft.
On Saturday, Blinken said in a statement that this third authorization for weapons shipments to Ukraine was “unprecedented.”
The Pentagon said the weapons included anti-armor, small arms, body armor and various munitions in support of Ukraine‘s front-line defenders. In addition, a State Department spokesperson said the materiel included anti-aircraft systems.
The United States drew from U.S. weapons stocks to supply Ukraine in the fall of 2021 and then again in December. Over the past year the United States has committed more than $1 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, Blinken said.
Other nations have pledged military materiel to Kyiv as Ukraine‘s military fights against an invading Russian force. Russian troops started advancing into Ukraine again on Saturday after President Vladimir Putin paused the offensive a day earlier in anticipation of talks with Kyiv that never happened, the Kremlin said.
The Netherlands will supply 200 Stinger air defense rockets to Ukraine as quickly as possible, the Dutch government said in a letter to parliament on Saturday.
Belgium has pledged 2,000 machine guns and 3,800 tons of fuel.
Germany, which had a long-standing policy of not exporting weapons to war zones, approved the delivery of 400 rocket propelled grenades from the Netherlands to Ukraine, the defense ministry in Berlin said, confirming a shift in policy after it faced criticism for refusing to send weapons to Kyiv, unlike other Western allies.
France has decided to send defensive military equipment to Ukraine to support the country against Russia’s invasion, a French army spokesman said on Saturday, adding that the issue of sending offensive arms was still under consideration
(Reporting By Steve Holland and Mike Stone in Washington, Additional reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by William Mallard and Andrea Ricci)
UPDATE: Feb., 26, 2022 — 4:45 a.m.
KYIV (Reuters) – Dozens of people were wounded in overnight fighting in Kyiv, city mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Saturday morning.
As of 6 a.m. local time (0400 GMT), 35 people, including two children, had been wounded, he said. It is unclear whether he was referring only to civilians.
Klitschko added there was currently no major Russian military presence in Kyiv, although he said saboteur groups were active.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Writing by Maxim Rodionov; Editing by Mark Potter)
UPDATE: Feb., 25, 2022 — 5:25 p.m.
KYIV (Reuters) -The Russian and Ukrainian governments on Friday signalled an openness to negotiations even as authorities in Kyiv urged citizens to help defend the capital from advancing Russian forces in the worst European security crisis in decades.
Ukraine and Russia will consult in coming hours on a time and place for talks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s spokesman Sergii Nykyforov said on social media, offering the first glimmer of hope for diplomacy since the invasion began.
The Kremlin said earlier it offered to meet in the Belarusian capital Minsk after Ukraine expressed a willingness to discuss declaring itself a neutral country, but Ukraine had proposed Warsaw as the venue. That, according to Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov, resulted in a “pause” in contacts.
“Ukraine was and remains ready to talk about a ceasefire and peace,” Nykyforov said in a post on Facebook. “We agreed to the proposal of the President of the Russian Federation.”
But U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Russia’s offer was an attempt to conduct diplomacy “at the barrel of a gun”, and that President Vladimir Putin’s military must stop bombing Ukraine if it was serious about negotiations.
The diplomatic overtures stood in stark contrast to events unfolding on the ground and Putin’s harsh rhetoric against Ukrainian leaders, including a call for a coup by the country’s military.
Kyiv residents were told by the defence ministry to make petrol bombs to repel the invaders, and on Friday evening witnesses reported hearing artillery rounds and intense gunfire from the western part of the city.
Zelenskiy filmed himself with aides on the streets of the capital, vowing to defend Ukraine‘s independence.
Some families cowered in shelters after Kyiv was pounded on Thursday night by Russian missiles. Others tried desperately to get on packed trains headed west, some of the hundreds of thousands who have left their homes to find safety, according to the United Nations’ aid chief.
After weeks of warnings from Western leaders, Putin unleashed a three-pronged invasion of Ukraine from the north, east and south on Thursday, in an attack that threatened to upend Europe’s post-Cold War order.
“I once again appeal to the military personnel of the armed forces of Ukraine: do not allow neo-Nazis and (Ukrainian radical nationalists) to use your children, wives and elders as human shields,” Putin said at a televised meeting with Russia’s Security Council on Friday. “Take power into your own hands.”
Putin has cited the need to “denazify” Ukraine‘s leadership as one of his main reasons for invasion, accusing it of genocide against Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies dismiss the accusations as baseless propaganda.
The United States imposed sanctions on both Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – moves coordinated with the European Union, Britain and Canada. However, the steady ramping-up of restrictions has not deterred Russia.
Moscow said it had captured the Hostomel airfield northwest of the capital – a potential staging post for an assault on Kyiv that has been fought over since Russian paratroopers landed there in the first hours of the war. This could not be confirmed and Ukrainian authorities reported heavy fighting there.
The mayor of Kyiv and its 3 million people, former world heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, said Russian saboteurs had already entered the city. “The enemy wants to put the capital on its knees and destroy us,” he said.
‘GLORY TO OUR DEFENDERS’
In New York, Russia vetoed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that would have deplored Moscow’s invasion, while China abstained – a move Western countries viewed as a win for demonstrating Russia’s international isolation.
Amid the chaos of war, a picture of what was happening on the ground across Ukraine – the second largest country in Europe after Russia itself – was slow to emerge.
Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter that there had been heavy fighting with deaths at the entrance to the eastern cities of Chernihiv and Melitopol, as well as at Hostomel.
“Glory to our defenders, both male and female, glory to Ukraine,” he said, flanked by the prime minister and advisors in a video posted to confirm he was in the capital.
Witnesses said they had heard explosions and gunfire near the airport in Kharkiv, Ukraine‘s second city, close to Russia’s border. Ukraine‘s military said Russian troops had been stopped with heavy losses near the northeastern city of Konotop.
Britain’s defence ministry said Russian armoured forces had opened a new route of advance towards the capital after failing to take Chernihiv.
Ukraine said more than 1,000 Russian soldiers had been killed so far. Russia did not release casualty figures.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart and condemned reported civilian deaths, including those of Ukrainian children, in attacks around Kyiv, the State Department said.
United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said hundreds of thousands of people were on the move in Ukraine.
Ukraine has banned men of fighting age from leaving, and at borders with Poland, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia, those seen crossing by Reuters journalists were mostly women and children.
Some women cried as they bade goodbye to male loved ones.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the decision to sanction Putin – something Biden had avoided until now – was intended to send a clear message of allied opposition. The EU earlier agreed to freeze any assets in the bloc belonging to Putin or Lavrov, and Britain followed suit.
Russia’s foreign ministry said the new sanctions reflected the West’s “absolute impotence,” the RIA news agency reported.
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UPDATE: Feb., 25, 2022 — 1:54 p.m.
(Reuters) – Kyiv‘s mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Friday the Ukrainian capital “has entered into a defensive phase” as Russian troops brought the sounds of war to the city.
“The city has gone into a defensive phase. Shots and explosions are ringing out in some neighbourhoods saboteurs have already entered Kyiv. The enemy wants to put the capital on its knees and destroy us,” he told a news briefing.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Jon Boyle)
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ORIGINAL STORY:
KYIV (Reuters) -Missiles pounded Ukraine‘s capital on Friday as Russian forces pressed their advance and authorities in Kyiv said they were preparing for an assault aimed at overthrowing the government.
Air raid sirens wailed over Kyiv, a European city of three million people, and some residents sheltered in underground metro stations, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion that has shocked the world.
Ukrainian officials said a Russian aircraft had been shot down and crashed into a building in Kyiv overnight, setting it ablaze and injuring eight people.
A senior Ukrainian official said Russian forces would enter areas just outside the capital later on Friday and that Ukrainian troops were defending positions on four fronts despite being outnumbered.
Kyiv city council warned residents of the Obolon district, near an air base seized on Thursday by Russian paratroopers, to stay indoors because of “the approach of active hostilities”.
Windows were blasted out of a 10-story apartment block near Kyiv’s main airport, where a two-meter crater filled with rubble showed where a shell had struck before dawn. A policeman said people were injured there but not killed.
“How we can live through it in our time? What should we think. Putin should be burnt in hell along with his whole family,” said Oxana Gulenko, sweeping broken glass from her room.
A neighbor, Soviet army veteran Anatoliy Marchenko, 57, could not find his cat that had run away during the shelling.
“I know people there, they are my friends,” he said of Russia. “What do they need from me? A war has come to my house.”
Witnesses said loud explosions could be heard in Kharkiv, Ukraine‘s second-biggest city, close to Russia’s border, and air raid sirens sounded over Lviv in the west. Authorities reported heavy fighting in the eastern city of Sumy.
‘NUMBER ONE TARGET’
Tens of thousands of people have fled the major cities. Dozens have been reported killed. Russian troops seized the Chernobyl former nuclear power plant north of Kyiv as they advanced on the city from Belarus. Ukraine said radiation levels were elevated there.
U.S. officials believe Russia’s initial aim is to topple President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and “decapitate” his government. Zelenskiy said the troops were coming for him, but he would stay in Kyiv.
“(The) enemy has marked me down as the number one target,” Zelenskiy said in a video message. “My family is the number two target. They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state.”
Russia launched its invasion by land, air and sea on Thursday following a declaration of war by Putin, in the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two.
Putin says Ukraine is an illegitimate state carved out of Russia, a view Ukrainians see as aimed at erasing their more than thousand-year history.
Putin’s full aims remain obscure. He says he does not plan a military occupation, only to disarm Ukraine and remove its leaders. But it is not clear how a pro-Russian leader could be installed without holding much of the country. Russia has floated no name of such a figure and none has come forward.
After Moscow denied for months it was planning an invasion, news that Putin had ordered one came as a shock to Russians accustomed to viewing their ruler of 22 years as a cautious strategist. Many Russians have friends and family in Ukraine.
Russia has cracked down on dissent and state media have relentlessly characterized Ukraine as a threat, but thousands of Russians took to the streets to protest against the war. Hundreds were swiftly arrested.
One pop star posted a video on Instagram opposing the war, and the head of a Moscow state-run theatre quit, saying she would not take her salary from a murderer.
‘RUSSIAN WARSHIP, GO FUCK YOURSELF’
Britain said Moscow’s aim was to conquer all of Ukraine, and its military had failed to meet its main objectives on the first day because it failed to anticipate Ukrainians would resist.
“Contrary to great Russian claims – and indeed President Putin’s sort of vision that somehow the Ukrainians would be liberated and would be flocking to his cause – he’s got that completely wrong, and the Russian army has failed to deliver, on day one, its main objective,” defense minister Ben Wallace said.
Ukrainians were circulating an unverified recording on Friday of a Russian warship ordering a Ukrainian Black Sea outpost to surrender. The Ukrainians reply: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.” Zelenskiy said the 13 guards were killed by a Russian strike and would receive posthumous honors.
Ukrainians were fleeing into neighboring Poland, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia, mostly women and children after Kyiv restricted passage for men between 18 and 60 years old.
Reuters journalists saw women crying as they bade goodbye to male loved ones and then crossed into northern Romania. Poland’s deputy interior minister Paweł Szefernaker said Ukrainian bus drivers were unable to drive across the border as conscription-age men were being held back in Ukraine.
A democratic nation of 44 million people, Ukraine voted for independence at the fall of the Soviet Union and has recently stepped up efforts to join NATO and the European Union, aspirations that infuriate Moscow.
Western countries announced sanctions on Moscow billed as far stronger than earlier measures, including blacklisting its banks and banning technology imports. They stopped short of forcing Russia out of the SWIFT system for international bank payments, drawing criticism from Kyiv which says the most serious steps should be taken now.
The U.N. Security Council will vote on Friday on a draft resolution condemning the invasion, though Moscow is certain to veto it. China, which recently signed a friendship treaty with Russia, has refused to call Moscow’s actions an invasion.
Russia is one of the world’s biggest energy producers, and both it and Ukraine are among the top exporters of grain. War and sanctions will disrupt economies around the world.
Oil and grain prices have soared. Share markets around the world, many of which plunged on Thursday at news of the outbreak of war, were mainly rebounding on Friday.
(Reporting by Natalia Zinets and Maria Tsvetkova in Kyiv, Aleksandar Vasovic in Mariupol, Alan Charlish in Medyka, Poland, Fedja Grulovic in Sighetu Marmatiei, Romania and Reuters bureauxWriting by Peter GraffEditing by Robert Birsel and Gareth Jones)
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