KYIV (UKRAINE) : Russian forces pounded Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, with airstrikes in a bid to break the will of Ukraine’s resistance on the seventh day of the war unleashed by President Vladimir Putin.
Kharkiv residents said the city suffered heavy bombardment overnight and into the morning, including airstrikes that hit residential areas and civilian infrastructure. Kharkiv’s police headquarters and the nearby university building were severely damaged and caught fire. Authorities reported 21 dead and 112 injured in the past 24 hours.
Russian forces also attempted to seize the city’s military hospital, local authorities said. However, the front line held and the city of 1.4 million people remained under Ukrainian control, they said.
The assault on civilian areas shows how Moscow has switched to a strategy of indiscriminate aerial assaults. Moscow focus at the start of the war on military and strategic targets has fallen away as it tries to demoralize Ukraine’s population.
Kharkiv, whose population is mostly Russian-speaking, appeared to bear the brunt of bombardments that continued across Ukrainian cities Wednesday. The northeastern city has mounted stiff resistance to Russia’s invasion, despite Mr. Putin having cited alleged discrimination against Ukraine’s Russian speakers as one of his reasons for the military campaign.
“The enemy is afraid of direct contact with Ukrainian defenders. That’s why it switched to the tactic of firing at peaceful Ukrainian cities from afar," Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Wednesday.
Mr. Putin launched Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the goal of overthrowing the country’s elected government and ending its alignment with the West. Russian forces, however, have struggled with fierce Ukrainian resistance and logistical problems, making slower progress than most military analysts had expected. Russian forces have encountered a range of obstacles since entering Ukraine, including food and fuel shortages, according to a senior U.S. defense official.
A miles-long column of Russian forces heading toward Kyiv from the northwest has been largely stationary since Ukrainian forces hit the convoy two days ago near the town of Bucha. Mr. Reznikov said that in recent days Ukraine had received and deployed a new batch of Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 armed drones, using them to target Russian columns from the air.
Ukraine was receiving critical supplies for its defense from Europe, Mr. Reznikov said, adding, “We have become the front line of the free world."
Russia has gained a swath of land in southern Ukraine in addition to its push in the northeast and northwest.
An airstrike hit Kyiv’s iconic television tower on Tuesday, killing five civilians and injuring five others, Ukraine’s state emergency service said. The strike also temporarily disabled the broadcasting ability of Ukraine’s central TV channels, Ukraine’s communications authority said. The authority said it would switch on reserve broadcast facilities.
The TV tower was hit after Russia’s Defense Ministry said it would target Ukrainian intelligence and communications facilities in central Kyiv that it said were being used for “information attacks" against Russia. Moscow urged residents living nearby to leave for their own safety. Western diplomats took the warning as a signal that a massive strike on Kyiv’s residential areas was imminent. Some of the remaining staff at foreign embassies left Ukraine’s capital.
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The TV tower, erected in 1973, stands in the Babyn Yar area, where much of Kyiv’s Jewish population was massacred by the Nazis during World War II.
Mr. Putin has said his goal is to “de-Nazify" Ukraine, falsely claiming that President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, is beholden to U.S.-guided neo-Nazis.
“Putin seeking to distort and manipulate the Holocaust to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign democratic country is utterly abhorrent," said Nathan Sharansky, the chairman of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center and a former Israeli deputy prime minister who was born in Donetsk, Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a Russian delegation was ready to continue cease-fire talks with Ukraine on Wednesday. The first round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations met in Belarus on Monday but produced no immediate results. Two sides initially agreed to meet again in the coming days on the Ukrainian-Polish border. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Kyiv is prepared to participate but doesn’t know when.
In Kharkiv, residents say the city is running low on food. Shops are barely functioning. Some districts reported water, heating and electricity outages.
“I have the impression that Russia wants to wipe the city off the face of the earth," said Oleksandr Skoryk, who owns a meat company based in a district in Kharkiv’s east.
The defense of the city is led by the Ukrainian army, along with several volunteer militias including nationalist groups and one made up of soccer fans.
“There are fights in the city. Russian warplanes are constantly bombing residential districts," said Heorhiy Tarasenko, a Kharkiv resident and volunteer fighter. “Russia is taking big losses and doesn’t want to fight with the army but with civilians."
A video from a strike that hit a residential district Tuesday showed two dead civilians, including one with his face mangled and pinned down by a tree branch. Several people wandered dazed amid rubble and burning buildings.
Mr. Skoryk said his district was hit by a rocket attack Tuesday that destroyed a supermarket. His company isn’t working, but he is emptying his warehouses of meat, handing it out on the streets and trying to deliver to hospitals and orphanages.
“The whole city has come together as one to help each other," said the 46-year-old. “Soldiers are defending us. We’ll fight to the end. No one will take Kharkiv."
President Biden spoke with Mr. Zelensky for more than 30 minutes on Tuesday, the White House said. The two leaders discussed U.S. and allied assistance for Ukraine and Russia’s escalation of attacks on sites used by civilians, including the strike near Babyn Yar, the White House said.
“He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over," Mr. Biden said in his State of the Union address. “Instead he met with a wall of strength he never imagined. He met the Ukrainian people."
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Topics russia-ukraine crisis