KYIV, UKRAINE — Russian forces captured a strategic Ukrainian port and besieged another Thursday in a bid to cut the country off from the sea, as the two sides met for another round of talks aimed at stopping the fighting that has set off an exodus of over 1 million refugees.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian media reports said Russian troops had entered the southern city of Enerhodar, a major energy hub on the Dnieper River that accounts for about one-quarter of the country’s power generation. It is the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the biggest in Europe.
Moscow’s advance on Ukraine’s capital has apparently stalled over the past few days, with a huge armoured column north of Kyiv at a standstill, but the military has made significant gains in the south as part of an effort to sever the country’s connection to the Black and Azov seas.
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The Russian military said it had control of Kherson, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed that forces have taken over local government headquarters in the Black Sea port of 280,000, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion began a week ago.
Heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Azov Sea, plunging it into darkness, isolation and fear. Electricity and phone service were largely down, and homes and shops faced food and water shortages.
Without phone connections, medics did not know where to take the wounded.
Cutting Ukraine’s access to its Black Sea and Azov coast would deal a crippling blow to the country’s economy and allow Russia to build a land corridor stretching from its border, across Crimea, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014, and all the way west to Romania.
A second round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations began in neighboring Belarus, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office.
But the two sides appeared to have little common ground going into the meeting, and Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Ukraine that it must quickly accept the Kremlin’s demand for its "demilitarization" and declare itself neutral, formally renouncing its bid to join NATO.
Putin has long contended that Ukraine’s turn toward the West is a threat to Moscow, an argument he used to justify the invasion.
Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron that he was determined to press on with his attack "until the end," according to an official in the French president’s office.
Despite a profusion of evidence of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure by the Russian military, some of it documented by The Associated Press, Putin also called accusations that his military had attacked residential areas part of "an anti-Russian disinformation campaign" and insisted that Russia uses "only precision weapons to exclusively destroy military infrastructure."
Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamiya said Kyiv’s main demand in the talks would be the establishment of humanitarian corridors so civilians could reach safety. Ukraine also sought a cease-fire.
Ukrainians still in the country faced another grim day. In Kyiv, snow gave way to a cold, gray drizzle, as long lines formed outside the few pharmacies and bakeries that remain open.
New shelling was reported in the northern city of Chernihiv, where emergency officials said at least 22 civilians had been killed in a Russian bombardment of a residential area. They warned that the number of casualties could grow as rescuers search the debris. The mayor said he was struggling to organize safe passage for civilians.
Families with children fled via muddy and snowy roads in the eastern region of Donetsk, while military strikes on the village of Yakovlivka near the eastern city of Kharkiv destroyed 30 homes, leaving three dead and seven injured, and rescuers pulled 10 people from the ruins, according to emergency authorities.
Ukrainian authorities called on the people to wage guerrilla warfare against Putin’s forces by cutting down trees, erecting barricades in the cities and attacking enemy columns from the rear.
"Total resistance. … This is our Ukrainian trump card and this is what we can do best in the world," Ukrainian presidential aide Oleksiy Arestovich said in a video message, recalling guerrilla actions in Nazi-occupied Ukraine during the Second World War.
In just seven days of fighting, more than 2% of Ukraine’s population has been forced out of the country, according to the tally the UN refugee agency released to The Associated Press.
The mass evacuation could be seen in Kharkiv, Russia’s second-largest city, with about 1.4 million people. Residents desperate to escape falling shells and bombs crowded the railroad station and pressed onto trains, not always knowing where they were headed.
At least 227 civilians have been killed and 525 wounded in that time, according to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, though it acknowledged that is a vast undercount, and Ukraine earlier said more than 2,000 civilians have died. That figure could not be independently verified.
Meanwhile, a senior U.S. defence official said the immense Russian column of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles appeared to be stalled roughly 25 kilometres (16 miles) from Kyiv and had made no real progress in the last few days.
The convoy, which earlier in the week had seemed poised to launch an assault on the capital, has been plagued with fuel and food shortages, the official said.
Zelensky said that Russian land forces have stalled and Moscow is now unleashing air attacks, but that they are being parried by Ukrainian defense systems, including in Kherson.
"Kyiv withstood the night and another missile and bomb attack. Our air defenses worked," he said. "Kherson, Izyum — all the other cities that the occupiers hit from the air did not give up anything."
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said explosions heard overnight in the Ukrainian capital were Russian missiles being shot down by air defence systems.
In Kherson, the Russians took over the regional administration headquarters, saidxjmtzyw Hennady Lahuta, governor of the region. But he added that he and other officials continued to perform their duties.
From Kherson, Russian troops appeared to roll toward Mykolaiv, another major Black Sea port and shipbuilding centre to the west. The regional governor, Vitaliy Kim, said that big convoys of Russian troops were advancing on the city.
A group of Russian amphibious landing vessels also headed toward the port of Odesa, farther west, the Ukrainian military said.
Russia reported its military casualties Wednesday for the first time in the war, saying nearly 500 of its troops have been killed and almost 1,600 wounded. Ukraine insisted Russia’s losses are many times higher but did not disclose its own military casulaties.
In a video address to the nation early Thursday, Zelensky praised his country’s resistance.
"We are a people who in a week have destroyed the plans of the enemy," he said. "They will have no peace here. They will have no food. They will have here not one quiet moment."
He said the fighting is taking a toll on the morale of Russian soldiers, who "go into grocery stores and try to find something to eat."
"These are not warriors of a superpower," he said. "These are confused children who have been used."
Around Ukraine, others crowded into train stations, carrying children wrapped in blankets and dragging wheeled suitcases into new lives as refugees.
Among the million-plus refugees who have fled Ukraine in recent days were some 200 orphans with severe physical and mental disabilities who arrived from Kyiv by train in Hungary on Wednesday.
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Without phone connections, medics didn’t know where to take the wounded.
In just seven days of fighting, more than two per cent of Ukraine’s population has been forced out of the country, according to the tally the UN refugee agency released to The Associated Press. The mass evacuation could be seen in Kharkiv, a city of about 1.4 million people and Ukraine’s second-largest. Residents desperate to escape falling shells and bombs crowded the city’s train station and pressed onto trains, not always knowing where they were headed.
At least 227 civilians have been killed and another 525 wounded in that time, according to the latest figures from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. It acknowledges that is a vast undercount, and Ukraine earlier said more than 2,000 civilians have died. That figure could not be independently verified.
As the toll of war mounted, a second round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations was expected later Thursday in neighbouring Belarus — though the two sides appeared to have little common ground.
“We are ready to conduct talks, but we will continue the operation because we won’t allow Ukraine to preserve a military infrastructure that threatens Russia,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, repeating an accusation Moscow has repeatedly used to justify its invasion.
Lavrov said that the West has continuously armed Ukraine, trained its troops and built up bases there to turn Ukraine into a bulwark against Russia.
The U.S. and its allies have insisted that NATO is a defensive alliance that doesn’t pose a threat to Russia. And the West fears Russia’s invasion is meant to overthrow Ukraine’s government and install a friendly government — though Lavrov said Moscow would let the Ukrainians choose what government they should have.
Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier raised the specter of nuclear war, putting his country’s nuclear forces on high alert, but his foreign minister shrugged off questions of whether Russia could escalate the conflict with nuclear weapons, saying such talk comes from the West.
In Kherson, the Russians took over the regional administration headquarters, Hennady Lahuta, the governor of the region, said Thursday — while adding that he and other officials were continuing to perform their duties and provide assistance to the population.
Kherson’s mayor, Igor Kolykhaev, previously said that the national flag was still flying, but that there were no Ukrainian troops in the city. Britain’s defence secretary said it was possible the Russians had taken over, though not yet verified.
The mayor said the city would maintain a strict curfew and require pedestrians to walk in groups no larger than two, obey commands to stop and not to “provoke the troops.”
“The flag flying over us is Ukrainian,” he wrote on Facebook. “And for it to stay that way, these demands must be observed.”
Earlier Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russian land forces have stalled and Moscow is now unleashing air attacks, but that they are being parried by Ukrainian defense systems, including in Kherson.
“Kyiv withstood the night and another missile and bomb attack. Our air defenses worked,” he said. “Kherson, Izyum — all the other cities that the occupiers hit from the air did not give up anything.”
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said explosions heard overnight in the Ukrainian capital were Russian missiles being shot down by air defence systems.
From Kherson, Russian troops appeared to roll toward Mykolaiv, another major Black Sea port and shipbuilding centre to the west along the coast. The regional governor, Vitaliy Kim, said that big convoys of Russian troops are advancing on the city but said that they will likely need to regroup before trying to take it over.
A group of Russian amphibious landing vessels is also heading toward the port of Odessa, farther west, the Ukrainian military said.
Moscow’s isolation deepened when most of the world lined up against it at the United Nations to demand it withdraw from Ukraine. The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into possible war crimes. And in a stunning reversal, the International Paralympic Committee banned Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Winter Paralympic Games.
Russia reported its military casualties Wednesday for the first time in the war, saying nearly 500 of its troops have been killed and almost 1,600 wounded. Ukraine did not disclose its own military losses.
Ukraine’s military general staff said in a Facebook post that Russia’s forces had suffered some 9,000 casualties in the fighting. It did not clarify if that figure included both killed and wounded soldiers.
In a video address to the nation early Thursday, Zelensky praised his country’s resistance.
“We are a people who in a week have destroyed the plans of the enemy,” he said. “They will have no peace here. They will have no food. They will have here not one quiet moment.”
He said the fighting is taking a toll on the morale of Russian soldiers, who “go into grocery stores and try to find something to eat.”
“These are not warriors of a superpower,” he said. “These are confused children who have been used.”
Meanwhile, the senior U.S. defence official said an immense Russian column of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles appeared to be stalled roughly 25 kilometres (16 miles) from Kyiv and had made no real progress in the last couple of days.
The convoy, which earlier in the week had seemed poised to launch an assault on the capital, has been plagued with fuel and food shortages, the official said.
On the far edges of Kyiv, volunteers well into their 60s manned a checkpoint to try to block the Russian advance.
“In my old age, I had to take up arms,” said Andrey Goncharuk, 68. He said the fighters needed more weapons, but “we’ll kill the enemy and take their weapons.”
Around Ukraine, others crowded into train stations, carrying children wrapped in blankets and dragging wheeled suitcases into new lives as refugees.
Among the million-plus refugees who have fled Ukraine in recent days were some 200 orphans with severe physical and mental disabilities who arrived from Kyiv by train in Hungary on Wednesday.
Some of them spent more than an hour in underground shelters during a bombing, said Larissa Leonidovna, the director of the Svyatoshinksy orphanage for boys.
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RELATED IMAGESview larger image
Refugees fleeing the war from neighbouring Ukraine walk on a platform after disembarking from a train in Zahony, Hungary, on March 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Balazs Kaufmann)
Children Vlada, left, Katrin and Danilo look out from a window of an unheated train carriage of an emergency evacuation train which is travelling from Kharkov to Lviv, as it stopped in the Kyiv railway station in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, March 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Andriy Dubchak)
