Mar 2, 2022: Russia’s forces have stepped up their bombardment of Ukraine’s largest cities, with rockets raining down residential areas, killing at least 10 people in the eastern city of Kharkiv and four in the western city of Zhytomyr, officials said.
The killings came late Tuesday when Ukrainian officials said a Russian attack on a television tower in the capital, Kyiv, had killed five more people.
Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said on his Telegram channel that rocket strikes on the centre of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city, had killed at least 10 people and wounded 35.
He also said in a separate post that a Russian cruise missile had hit residential areas in Zhytomyr, about 120km west of Kyiv. The missile appeared aimed at a nearby base of the 95th Airborne Brigade in Zhytomyr. It set several residential buildings on fire.
Ukraine’s health ministry has previously said 352 civilians had been killed during the Russian attack, as of Monday. The figure included 14 children, it said.
The UK’s defence ministry said it had seen an increase in Russian air and artillery strikes on populated urban areas over the past two days, adding that three cities Kharkiv, Kherson and Mariupol were encircled by Russian forces.
According to a report by AFP, Russian airborne troops landed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Wednesday, the Ukrainian said, adding that there were immediate clashes.
In Kherson off the coast of the Black Sea, Russian forces took control of the railway station and the port overnight, city mayor Igor Kolykhayev was quoted by local media. While in Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov, more than a hundred people were injured in Russian fire, the mayor of the city, Vadym Boychenko was quoted as saying by Ukrainian media.
In Borodyanka, 50 kilometres from Kyiv, Russian airstrikes destroyed two residential buildings on Tuesday, according to Ukraine’s deputy minister of foreign affairs Emine Dzhaparova.
Meanwhile, confirming fears of Ukraine’s defense ministry, Belarusian President Alexandar Lukashenko announced on Tuesday he had ordered more troops to the south of the country, by the border with Ukraine, but that the forces would not be taking part in the attack on Ukraine.
Lukashenko told a meeting of his security council that he would be sending five tactical battle groups armed with armoured vehicles and artillery to protect the south. Helicopters and warplanes were already protecting the southern border, he told the meeting.
Explaining his decision not to send troops into Ukraine itself, he said: “That’s not our job.”
Lukashenko also said he was sending troops west to the country’s border with Poland. “We must under no circumstances allow an invasion of NATO forces on Belarusian territory, nor the least operation on our territory,” he said.
However, Lukashenko has allowed Russian troops to use Belarusian territory to invade Ukraine from the north, with Ukraine’s defense ministry saying, “Missile attacks against military and civilian targets” in Ukraine have been “systematically” launched from Belarusian territory since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24.
“Belarusian troops have been put on high alert and are concentrated in areas closest to the border with Ukraine,” the ministry said in a statement on Facebook.
Yesterday, Ukrainian intelligence noted “significant activity” of aircraft in the border area, and convoys of vehicles carrying food and ammunition were observed there, the statement said.
In view of these movements, the ministry warned that Belarus “could probably support the Russian invaders in the Russian-Ukrainian war in the future”
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