Russia bombs Kyiv as European leaders head to Ukraine’s capital

A missile destroyed a building belonging to a weapons manufacturer in central Kyiv in a pre-strike, blowing windows of buildings within a one-block radius. Separately, two apartment buildings were hit, one of them caught fire.

Two residents died in the apartment complex and dozens were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment for inhaling the fumes. Officials said there were no deaths at the weapons facility.

With Russian forces pushed into the city limits, Kyiv’s mayor said he was imposing a 36-hour curfew from late Tuesday. Heavy artillery barrage rocked the city again in the early hours of Tuesday and an overnight firefight illuminated the western horizon with tracer bullets.

The Polish government said a delegation of Central European government leaders visiting Kyiv plans to present a comprehensive package of support for Ukraine. Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki and Deputy Prime Minister Jarosaw Kaczyski, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and Prime Minister of Slovenia Janez Janza were scheduled to meet Mr. Zelensky and Prime Minister Denis Schmahl as representatives of the European Council.

Diplomats said the EU also agreed on a fourth sanctions package targeting Russia, including broader sanctions on energy sector investments and high-value luxury goods, and new targeted sanctions against Russian business executives and oligarchs.

The overnight attacks came as Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were gearing up for stalled talks on Monday.

Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, previously said Ukraine’s negotiators would focus on a ceasefire, an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops and securing security guarantees for the country. “Talks have taken a technical break until tomorrow,” Mr Podolik wrote on Twitter. “speaking terms.”

Kremlin ally Vladimir Medinsky, who is leading the Russian delegation in the talks, said talks with the Ukrainian side would continue “every day, seven days a week” via videoconferencing, he said on his Telegram messenger after Monday’s talks. Wrote on the channel He said the format saved time and money.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that “the job is difficult” but the fact that talks are on was positive.

Twenty days into the war, Russia has occupied the area south of Ukraine, but is halted around Kyiv and elsewhere. Increasingly, its forces have resorted to bombing residential areas and civilian infrastructure in an attempt to quell Ukrainian resistance. The death toll from Monday’s rocket attack on the western city of Rivne rose to 19, the local military administration said.

Ukraine’s military also said it had detected a Russian surveillance drone crossing the border into neighboring Poland. The air force said overnight that the drone was shot down by Ukrainian air defense after it returned to Ukrainian airspace.

The drone appears to have been monitoring Ukraine’s military training center near the Polish border with Russian missiles on Sunday, killing at least 35 people.

It was the latest incident in recent days of a drone passing from a war zone into the airspace of a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Romania said it was investigating a drone crash in its region. Another drone, suspected to be of Ukrainian origin, crashed a few days earlier in Croatia, prompting the government there to conduct a surveillance flight to its airspace. The French military said nothing suspicious appeared on that flight.

Civilian casualties are likely to mount quickly, officials have warned, as fighting moves from the outer suburbs into cities, and Russian heavy weapons are brought to bear on buildings to destroy Ukrainian resistance.

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said Tuesday there were plans to evacuate civilians through nine humanitarian corridors, including a humanitarian aid convoy heading towards the besieged port city of Mariupol.

Russian forces fired mortars at a convoy of buses evacuating civilians from Hostomel, northwest of Kyiv, on Monday, the national police said. The driver of one of the buses was injured in the shelling, and a woman traveling in a civilian vehicle was killed. The rest made it to safety.

According to UN figures, the number of people fleeing fighting in Ukraine is now about three million.

Mr Zelensky is due to deliver a virtual address to members of Congress on Wednesday. The Ukrainian president has called for more aid from Western allies, and several US lawmakers have pressured the Biden administration to take further action.

The White House is discussing a possible trip to Europe by Mr Biden in the coming weeks, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

Weapons supplied to Ukraine by the US and its European allies—particularly antitank and anti-aircraft weapons—have been instrumental in halting the advance of Russian ground troops, who have suffered heavy casualties in the north as they encircled Kyiv. have tried.

Early Tuesday local time, Mr Zelensky urged Russian troops to call off fighting, citing heavy losses. “If you surrender to our army, we will treat you the way people should be treated. As people, decently. In a way you were not treated in your army,” he said in a statement.

He thanked the Russians who raised their voice against the war, singing an anti-war protestor who ran on the set of an evening news program on Russian state television’s flagship Channel One on Monday to read a poster on the set: “Someone not war. Stop the War. Don’t believe the hype. They lie to you here. Russians against war.” He shouted: “Stop the war, not for the war” before the camera cut.

Russia’s defense ministry said on Tuesday that its forces had seized “a stronghold of nationalists and foreign mercenaries” north of Kyiv, which is carrying 10 Javelin missile systems and other weapons supplied by Western nations to Ukraine. Is.

Russia’s ground attacks around Kyiv and the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv subside, while Moscow’s troops switch to remotely targeting civilian infrastructure and residential areas. In the south, Russia has made rapid progress, helped in 2014 by its former military presence and more favorable terrain on the Crimean peninsula.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it had taken control of the entire Kherson region in the south of Ukraine.