LAST UPDATE | 27 Mar 2022
UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR Zelenskyy has warned Moscow it is sowing a deep hatred for Russia among his people, as constant artillery barrages and bombings reduce cities to rubble, kill civilians and leave survivors short on food and water.
“You are doing everything so that our people themselves leave the Russian language, because the Russian language will now be associated only with you, with your explosions and murders, your crimes,” he said in his latest video address.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Chief of the Defence Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov said in a statement on social media that as Vladimir Putin has failed to “capture Kyiv and remove Ukraine’s government”, he may aim to divide the country like Korea.
“There are reasons to believe that he may try to impose a separation line between the occupied and unoccupied regions of our country. In fact, it will be an attempt to set up South and North Koreas in Ukraine,” Budanov said.
“The invaders will try to set up some quasi-state as an alternative to independent Ukraine… We can see attempts to set up ‘parallel’ local governments in occupied areas and to force people to give up the Ukrainian currency,” he added.
The comments came after the western town of Lviv was rocked by a series of powerful explosions, and before it was announced that a second round of talks between Kyiv and Moscow would take place in Turkey from tomorrow until Wednesday, just over one month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s onslaught on Lviv was a reminder that Moscow is willing to strike anywhere in Ukraine – despite its claim to be focusing its offensive on the country’s east.
The back-to-back airstrikes shook the city that has become a haven for an estimated 200,000 people who have had to flee their hometowns.
The attack came as US President Joe Biden met with Ukrainian refugees yesterday in a show of solidarity, though he was in the capital Warsaw, and far from the Ukrainian border, which is about 45 miles west of Lviv.
During his impassioned speech, he said that Vladimir Putin was a “butcher” who “cannot remain in power” - leading to the White House and the US Secretary of State to clarify there were no plans for a regime change and to British minister Nadhim Zahawi to say that it is “for the Russian people to decide how they are governed”.
Strikes on Lviv
Lviv has become a humanitarian staging ground for Ukraine, and the attacks could further complicate the already challenging process of sending aid to the rest of the country.
The first strike involved two Russian rockets that hit an industrial area in the northeastern outskirts of Lviv and apparently injured five people, the regional governor, Maksym Kozytskyy, said on Facebook. A thick, black plume of smoke billowed from the site for hours.
A second rocket attack occurred just outside the city hours later and caused three explosions, Kozytskyy told a press briefing as another round of air raid sirens wailed. He said an oil facility and factory connected to the military, both in areas where people live, were struck yesterday, though he did not give more details.
Kozytskyy said a man was detained on suspicion of espionage at one of the explosion sites after police found that he had recorded a rocket flying toward the target and striking it.
Police also found on his telephone photos of checkpoints in the region, which Kozytskyy said had been sent to two Russian telephone numbers.
The day’s events were enough to make some people in Lviv prepare to move again, said Michael Bociurkiw, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council who was in the city.
“I saw some Kyiv cars being packed up,” he said. It was a significant turn in a week where the city had begun “roaring back” to life after weeks of war, he said.
He believes the city could remain a target, noting that Lviv was the birthplace of Ukrainian nationalism. “It’s getting closer,” he said of the war.
The next target
Two cities at opposite ends of the country are seeing some of the worst suffering: Chernihiv in the north is strategically located on the road from the Belarusian border to the capital Kyiv, and Mariupol in the south is a key port city on the Sea of Azov.
Both are encircled by Russian forces, but still holding out.
There are fears that the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, which has been holding out against Russian forces since the early days of the invasion, could become the next Mariupol.
The city, located not far from the border with Belarus on the road to Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, is surrounded, and residents who have been unable to flee have had to contend with a lack of power and drinking water as well as more immediate danger from Russian bombardment.
On Wednesday, Russian bombs destroyed Chernihiv’s main bridge over the Desna River on the road leading to Kyiv.
On Friday, artillery shells rendered the remaining pedestrian bridge impassable, cutting off the last possible route for people to get out or for food and medical supplies to get in.
Just over a month into the invasion, Russia’s attack has slowed into a grinding war of attrition as its military tries to pound cities like Chernihiv into submission.
Bombings of hospitals and other non-military sites, such as the Mariupol theatre where Ukrainian officials said a Russian air strike is believed to have killed some 300 people last week, have given rise to war crime allegations.
Questions about the future direction of Russia’s offensive surfaced on Friday when a high-ranking military official said the main objective of the first stage of the operation – reducing Ukraine’s fighting capacity – had “generally been accomplished”.
Col-Gen Sergei Rudskoi, deputy chief of the Russian general staff, said Russian forces could now focus on “the main goal, the liberation of Donbas”.
Donbas is the largely Russian-speaking eastern region where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 and where many residents desire close ties to Moscow.
Mariupol is located there, although outside of the two territories controlled by the separatists.
With reporting from © AFP 2022, Gráinne Ní Aodha.
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