KYIV, Ukraine — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its 10th day on Saturday with a cease-fire quickly falling apart in two besieged southern cities and Russian President Vladimir Putin warning that any no-fly zone imposed over Ukrainian skies “would bring catastrophic results not only to Europe, but to the whole world.”
As Russia continued shelling civilian targets and Ukrainian protesters defiantly waved blue and yellow flags in multiple Russian-occupied cities, Putin said Western sanctions that have sent the ruble tumbling are “akin to declaring war” and he also threatened to strip Ukraine of its statehood if it continues to resist the invading army.
“If they continue to do what they are doing, they are calling into question the future of Ukrainian statehood,” Putin said during a televised meeting with flight attendants from Russian airline Aeroflot, which has been forced to ground nearly all of its international flights because of the Western sanctions. “And if this happens, it will be entirely on their conscience.”
Putin has repeatedly sought to blame Ukrainian leadership for fueling the unprovoked invasion, while stepping up censorship at home, including blocking access to Facebook and some foreign news sites, vastly limiting Russians’ knowledge and understanding of the conflict.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has continued to plead for additional international assistance, telling nearly 300 U.S. lawmakers from both chambers of Congress on Saturday that his country desperately needs more. In particular, according to a congressman on the call, he asked for supplies of fighter aircraft — namely older Russian planes that Poland, Bulgaria and Romania possess and which Ukrainian pilots already know how to operate.
While the U.S. and other NATO countries have held off in declaring a no-fly zone over Ukraine out of fear that it would dramatically escalate the war, U.S. lawmakers from across the political spectrum appear eager to provide Ukraine with more armaments.
Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., who was in the virtual meeting with Zelenskyy, said in an interview that it was “more than possible” for the aircraft to be transferred to Ukraine and called for swift passage in Congress of a $10 billion emergency aid package for Ukraine and NATO allies.
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said he also supports sending fighter aircraft to Ukraine.
“Ukraine needs air power urgently and America should send it,” Sasse said in a statement. “Americans should absolutely send Ukrainians planes, helicopters and (drones). Let’s resupply Ukraine’s air force today.”
The rising geopolitical tensions — which were further heightened Saturday when Russian customs officials announced they had arrested an American pro basketball star, identified as Brittney Griner of the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, on drug charges at a Moscow airport last month — come amid the swift breakdown of a cease-fire agreement meant to allow the exit of civilians from war zones.
The cease-fire had been set to begin at 9 a.m. Kyiv time under an agreement with the Ukrainian government, the Russian Defense Ministry said, making it the first concrete sign of cooperation between the two sides after they decided in negotiations this week to create humanitarian corridors aimed at evacuating civilians from conflict areas.
Pavlo Kirilenko, head of the Ukrainian government’s regional military administration in the eastern province of Donetsk, confirmed the cease-fire and evacuation of Mariupol in a post on Facebook. The city of Volnovakha was also covered by the agreement.
But about an hour after the evacuation began, at 11 a.m. Kyiv time, Russian forces resumed shelling, making it impossible to move people out safely, Mariupol’s deputy mayor said. By 1 p.m., the Donetsk regional administration suspended the evacuation effort, with residents advised to head to shelters and abandon the gathering points where municipal buses were to spirit them out of the city.
The designated safe corridor from Mariupol was supposed to stretch about 140 miles northwest to the city of Zaporizhzhia, close to the site of a nuclear power plant that was set ablaze during shelling Friday. Kirilenko said it was “strictly forbidden to deviate from the route of the humanitarian corridor.”
Before the evacuation began, he called on residents with their own vehicles to “take people with you, fill your vehicle as much as possible.”
The announcement of the cease-fire agreement came as Russian forces have pressed the attack in Ukraine’s south, the one area of the country where their campaign appears to be making gains.
Mariupol, a southeastern port city of nearly 450,000 people, has suffered a relentless Russian barrage for days and appears to be surrounded. Photos and video published by the Associated Press showed a hospital filled with young victims who could not be saved: an 18-month-old baby named Kirill, a teen boy struck by bombs while playing soccer with friends, a 6-year-old girl who died in her pajamas.
The bombardment of the city — which has left many without electricity, water and food — halted briefly when the cease-fire began but soon started up again, Mariupol’s deputy mayor, Sergei Orlov, told the BBC.
“At first our people told (us) that the shelling stops for a little time, but then it continues, and they continue to use hard artillery and rockets to bomb Mariupol. That’s why people are very scared,” Orlov said.
A takeover of the city would further consolidate Russia’s gains on the Black Sea coast and create an overland link with Crimea, which Moscow annexed illegally in 2014. That would then serve as a springboard for an all-out assault on Odesa, the crown jewel of Ukraine’s coastal cities.
Despite the attempted cease-fires in the south, fighting persisted elsewhere in the country Saturday. Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and a prime target of Russia’s assault over the last 10 days, saw another bout of shelling in the early morning, with observers on social media reporting rocket attacks in the city. Local news outlets also reported shelling in the city of Sumy, about 90 miles northwest of Kharkiv.
In the village of Markhalivka, 13 miles southwest of Kyiv’s center and ostensibly near a humanitarian corridor allowing residents to escape the capital, an airstrike Friday left a rubble-filled crater and killed six people — including a 12-year-old girl.
Her father, Igor Majayev, a 54-year-old driver, sifted through the ruins of what had been his two-story home on Saturday.
“What can I say?” he said, pausing for a moment to take in the totality of the destruction. When the strike happened, Majayev was lying down in the room next to where his daughter, Masha, was sleeping.
“This was her wheelchair,” he said in a daze. Now, she’s dead. So is his wife, Anya. Two grandchildren, 7 and 8 years old, were injured and taken to a hospital in nearby Vasylkiv.
“Never in my life did I imagine this situation, and from Russia,” he said.
“Western countries warned us, but we just didn’t believe this would happen.”
More than 10,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or injured, and hundreds of military units — including tanks, helicopters and other aircraft — have been destroyed in the fighting as well as other tactical equipment, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov wrote on Facebook. The figures could not be independently verified.
Russia has acknowledged that about 500 of its soldiers have been killed and 1,500 injured.
The civilian death toll is also mounting. The United Nations’ office for human rights said 331 civilians have been killed and 675 injured since the start of hostilities Feb. 24 up until Thursday, but the agency says that is almost certainly an undercount.
Those who could, fled.
On the southwestern highway out of Kyiv, an ever-growing mass of vehicles stretched for miles before the last checkpoint out of the capital.
Every journey out now takes hours through innumerable checkpoints, with testy residents-turned-reservists, blithely resting well-used hunting rifles — barrel aimed squarely at the car — watching for any untoward sign of Russian saboteurs.
Toward the northwest, where the fighting near Kyiv was at its strongest, cars raced on the western highway away from Bucha and Irpin, two towns near the Russian column. Many had white rags tied to the antenna or raised from a pole out the window. Others spelled out “Deti,” which means children, in masking tape on the hoods.
Among the 1.45 million Ukrainians who have escaped Ukraine, according to the United Nations, more have ended up in Poland than in any other country.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken went there Saturday to thank Polish leaders for receiving tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees daily and for hosting the deployment of U.S. military personnel, whose presence along the eastern flank of NATO territories has been expanded in recent weeks.
“At this moment of crisis for millions of Ukrainians — and as the security of Europe hangs in the balance — Poland has stepped forward with generosity, with leadership, with resolve,” Blinken said..
Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau said Poland has already received 700,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war and expected hundreds of thousands more, creating a “humanitarian crisis of an unimaginable scale.”
Rau was more forceful than many Western leaders in denouncing war crimes allegedly committed by Russia. “The way in which Russia conducts hostilities, based on the desire to break the will of Ukrainian resistance by means of attacks that terrorize civilian population — shelling residential areas, nuclear power plants, and non-military venues — are war crimes,” Rau said.
The International Criminal Court says it has started an investigation into potential war crimes in Ukraine.
After meeting with Ukrainians who fled their homes to neighboring Poland, Blinken stepped across the border, ever so briefly, into Ukraine in a symbolic show of support. He was joined by his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, and said the worldwide support for the beleaguered nation was unprecedented and a “sea change.”
Kuleba repeated Ukraine’s need for a no-fly zone, a potentially precarious arrangement that the U.S. and NATO have so far rejected.
“If we lose the skies,” Kuleba said, “there will be much, much more blood on the ground, and it will be the blood of civilians.
