KHARKIV, Ukraine — As Russian troops closed in on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Friday in Europe’s largest ground conflict since World War II, leaders of the besieged nation urged their citizens to fight back.
“Make Molotov cocktails, neutralize the occupier!” the Ukrainian Border Guard implored in a Facebook post, warning that Russian troops had advanced on the suburbs of Kyiv.
As military and civilian deaths mounted and explosions and air-raid sirens sounded across the country, there was a deepening sense among Ukrainians that nobody was coming to help.
“We are defending our country alone,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address in which he ordered men of fighting age to stay in the country.
Zelenskyy slammed sanctions levied by the West against Russia as insufficient, and warned that unless world leaders do more to stop the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin would continue his aggressions.
“If you don’t help us now, if you fail to offer a powerful assistance to Ukraine, tomorrow the war will knock on your door,” said Zelenskyy, a former stand-up comic and actor who has transformed, overnight, into a wartime leader.
On the second day of its large-scale assault on Ukraine — part of Putin’s dream of stitching back together remnants of the former Soviet Union — the Kremlin said Friday it was ready for talks, but only once the Ukrainian army ended its resistance and laid down arms.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov insisted at a briefing that Russia does not intend “to oppress” the Ukrainian people and said they should have “a chance to decide their future.” But Pentagon officials have warned that Moscow intends to replace Ukraine’s democratically elected government with one it can control.
Zelenskyy, who has repeatedly said that he would not accept a Ukraine under Russia’s thumb, has offered to negotiate on one of Putin’s key demands: that Ukraine declare itself neutral and abandon its ambition of joining NATO. The goal of membership in the transatlantic military alliance is enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution. The Kremlin said Friday that Russia was ready to send a delegation to Belarus to discuss that point.
In the meantime, Russian troops continued their assault across Ukraine, hitting strategic military sites but also civilian targets.
In a Kyiv apartment building, residents woke to plumes of smoke and screaming — the result, according to the city’s mayor, of Russian shelling.
“What are you doing? What is this?” asked a dazed survivor, Yurii Zhyhanov, according to the Associated Press. As tens of thousands of his compatriots have already done, he quickly gathered his belongings to flee the city with his mother.
“The enemy wants to bring the capital and us to our knees,” said Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko, adding that Russian saboteurs had already infiltrated the city. Authorities said Friday that some 18,000 guns along with ammunition were distributed to reserve fighters in Kyiv.
Russia’s military said it had seized a strategic airport near Kyiv, which would allow it to rapidly build up forces to take the capital.
It said it had already cut off the city from the west — the direction in which many of those escaping the invasion were heading. Lines of cars sat snarled in traffic as the sun went down Friday, trying to make their way toward the Polish border.
United Nations officials reported at least 25 civilian deaths, and said that at least 100,000 people have fled their homes. The U.N. has warned that some 4 million Ukrainians could flee the country if the fighting escalates, which would represent a refugee crisis in Europe not seen since 2015, when millions arrived there after escaping the Syrian civil war.
Zelenskyy said in an address late Thursday that 137 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the first day of fighting, along with 316 wounded.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar gave a tally of Russian losses. As of Friday afternoon, she said, the Russian army had lost up to 80 tanks, hundreds of armored combat vehicles, 10 warplanes and seven helicopters. The figures could not be independently verified. Moscow has not issued a toll of losses.
The pyrotechnics over Kyiv were largely absent in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-most populous city.
In the morning, residents cautiously emerged from the underground subway stations where they had taken shelter, making their way along mostly empty streets amid a snowstorm. Even the buses were still running.
It wasn’t until slightly before noon that the sounds of explosions reverberated through the city center, sending pedestrians scurrying for shelter while motorists attempted to escape from a threat they could only hear but could not see.
One of the last remaining staff members at a hotel in Kharkiv said he intended to stay. Alexander, a 24-year-old waiter who declined to give his last name, seemed resigned to the Russian invasion to come.
“Why would I go?” he said. “This is my country.
“America isn’t here. The European Union isn’t here,” he said. “So we’re fighting on our own.”
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(Bulos reported from Kharkiv and Linthicum from Mexico City.)
