KYIV: Ukrainian forces repulsed a Russian attack on Kyiv but “sabotage groups” infiltrated the capital, officials said on Saturday as a defiant President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed his country would never give in.
On the third day of an invasion that Ukraine said has killed 198 civilians including three children, Russia also brushed off a barrage of Western sanctions and said it had fired cruise missiles at military targets. It denied hitting civilian targets despite evidence to the contrary.
Wearing olive green military-style clothing and looking tired but determined, Zelensky spoke in a video message posted on his Twitter account.
“I am here. We will not lay down any weapons. We will defend our state, because our weapons are our truth,” he said.
“Our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children and we will protect all of this.”
Kyiv, he said, was still under Ukrainian control.
“We have withstood and are successfully repelling enemy attacks. The fighting goes on,” he said.
“We already have almost full support from EU countries for disconnecting Russia from Swift,” he said, referring to the global financial messaging service. “I hope that Germany and Hungary will have the courage to support this decision. We have the courage to defend our homeland, to defend Europe.”
Shutting Russia out of Swift would have massive consequences for its economy, but could also pose problems in Europe. However, many EU countries are now coming around to the idea, as is the United States, sources in Washington told Bloomberg News.
The Kremlin on Saturday accused Ukraine of prolonging the conflict by refusing to negotiate.
“In connection with the expected negotiations, the Russian president yesterday afternoon ordered the suspension of the advance of the main forces of the Russian Federation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“Since the Ukrainian side refused to negotiate, the advance of the Russian forces resumed this afternoon.”
On Friday, as Moscow’s forces approached Kyiv, the Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin was ready to send a delegation for talks to Belarus, where Russia has stationed thousands of troops.
It is one of the places from where Ukraine says it is being attacked.
In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron warned that the world must brace for a long war.
“This crisis will last, this war will last and all the crises that come with it will have lasting consequences,” he said, adding: “We must be prepared”.
The Kyiv Independent, an English-language news portal, quoted the Ukraine military as saying that Russia had lost 14 planes, eight helicopters, 102 tanks, 15 heavy machine guns, 1 BUK missile and other munitions since Thursday.
It also quoted the armed forces as saying that Russia had lost over 3,500 soldiers, but a breakdown was not provided of the dead, wounded or those taken prisoner.
Moscow has yet to issue an official report on its casualties.
On Saturday morning local time, AFP reporters in Kyiv heard occasional blasts of what soldiers said were artillery and Grad missiles being fired in an area northwest of the city centre.
There were also loud explosions in the centre.
Emergency services said a high-rise apartment block was hit by shelling overnight, posting a picture that showed a hole covering at least five floors blasted into the side of the building.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, said the building had been hit by a missile.
“The night was difficult, but there are no Russian troops in the capital,” he said. (Story continues below)
An apartment building damaged by shelling in Kyiv on Saturday. (Reuters photo)
In other developments:
Financial ‘nuclear option’
The United States is seriously considering whether to push for Russia’s expulsion from the Swift financial messaging system, which could have a massive impact on the country’s economy.
President Joe Biden said earlier that European allies had voiced concerns over the risk such a move posed to their economies. But many, including France and Italy, are now open to the idea of exercising a financial “nuclear option” that seemed unlikely just days ago.
Swift will only sever access if the EU passes sanctions against the targeted entity or country.
In the 27-nation EU, such decisions require unanimity. But the tide there is turning in favour of expelling Russia, with Germany the main holdout.
Swift — which stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication — is overseen by the National Bank of Belgium and central bank representatives from the US, UK, EU, Japan, Russia, China and others. It delivers secure messages among more than 11,000 financial institutions and companies, in over 200 countries and territories.
Refugee numbers swell
Refugees fleeing Ukraine continued to pour across its western borders on Saturday, with around 100,000 reaching Poland in two days, finding temporary sanctuary in sports halls and train stations.
At Medyka in southern Poland, some 85km from Lviv in western Ukraine, thousands of Ukrainians waited for officials to process them as refugees.
Czech railways sent special trains that arrived early on Saturday at the Polish border carrying Ukrainians living in the Czech Republic to meet family members who had escaped the war.
In the Slovak border town Ubla, officials put refugees in a local gymnasium where foldout beds and air mattresses filled a basketball court.
Air traffic action
The Baltic nations of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania have agreed in principle to close their airspace to Russian aircraft, Lithuanian Transport Minister Marius Skuodis said on Saturday.
“Our plan is to take the step simultaneously,” Skuodis wrote on Facebook.
Russia, meanwhile, said it was closing its airspace to flights from Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech Republic in response to punishment over Moscow’s actions.
Internet affected
Internet connectivity in Ukraine has been affected by the invasion, particularly in the southern and eastern parts of the country where fighting has been heaviest, internet monitors said.
Connectivity to GigaTrans, Ukraine’s main internet provider, dropped to below 20% of normal levels before returning to higher levels in the early hours of Friday morning, according to NetBlocks.
“While there is no nation-scale blackout, little is being heard from the worst affected regions, and for others there’s an ever-present fear that connectivity could worsen at any moment, cutting off friends and family,” Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, told Reuters.
The Monash IP Observatory in Australia said that so far only the Obolonskyi district of Kyiv and central parts of Kharkiv, in Ukraine’s east, showed clear signs of internet failure.
‘Not an invasion’
Russia’s communications regulator on Saturday urged media to remove reports describing Moscow’s attack on Ukraine as an “assault, invasion, or declaration of war”.
In a statement, Roskomnadzor accused a number of independent media outlets including he television channel Dozhd and Echo of Moscow radio of spreading “unreliable socially significant untrue information” about the shelling of Ukrainian cities by the Russian army and civilian deaths.
It ordered the outlets in question to delete the offending information or face restricted access to their websites and media resources.
Embassies on the move
The Netherlands and Norway said they were moving their embassies in Ukraine to Poland. Their decision came a day after Sweden decided to close its mission in Ukraine.
“Ambassador Jennes de Mol and his team will immediately move to Jaroslaw, on the Polish side of the border with Ukraine, to continue their work there,” the Dutch foreign ministry said in a statement.
Norway said its embassy in Kyiv was “temporarily closed and will operate until further notice” from Warsaw.
US rejects oil embargo
The United States won’t target Russian oil with sanctions because it would drive up prices and hurt consumers without harming President Vladimir Putin, a US State Department official said.
“If we target the oil and gas sector for Putin, and in this case the Russian energy establishment, then prices would spike. Perhaps he would sell only half of his product, but for double the price,” said Amos Hochstein, the State Department’s senior energy security adviser.
The invasion has brought turmoil to commodities markets as the conflict ensnares merchant shipping.
At least three merchant ships have reportedly been hit since Russian forces began the attack on its neighbour this week. Insurers are either not offering to cover vessels sailing into the Black Sea, or they’re demanding huge premiums to do so.
That has compounded oil trading and shipping markets that were already — with a few exceptions — leery of doing Russian deals while people figure out the sanctions risk of buying the nation’s crude.
The Black Sea is a critical region for agricultural traders and oil traders alike. Ukraine and Russia together account for more than a quarter of the global trade in wheat and about a fifth of corn. That trade was thrown into chaos after Ukraine’s ports closed in the wake of Russia’s invasion.
