MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian military was stiffening defenses Sunday against Russian assaults in the east and south as the nation’s president framed the war as an existential threat to all of European democracy.
“The whole European project is a target for Russia,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address, labeling the conflict raging inside Ukraine a “catastrophe” that will “inevitably” spread elsewhere in Europe.
“Russian aggression was not intended to be limited to Ukraine alone, to the destruction of our freedom and our lives alone,” he added.
The Ukrainian military said it was resisting Russian efforts in the east to break through from the city of Izyum, which Russian forces have seized as a strategic foothold to take more territory. Ukraine said it was also continuing to fight off Russian attacks in the southeastern port city of Mariupol, much of which has been destroyed in weeks of street fighting and shelling.
Since Russian troops pulled back from Kyiv earlier this month after they failed to take the capital and became bogged down in the northern reaches of the city, Ukraine has been bracing for new Russian advances in the south and the east. Russia says it is focusing its attention on the eastern Donbas region, home to a pair of breakaway, pro-Russia republics where fighting has been ongoing since 2014.
Satellite images released Sunday by Maxar Technologies show what appears to be an 8-mile-long convoy of Russian military vehicles heading south about 60 miles east of the city of Kharkiv. In another apparent switch in strategy, Russia has appointed a new commander to oversee its invasion of Ukraine, according to U.S. officials.
Speaking to CNN, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the new wartime leader, Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, helped lead attacks on civilians while he was in charge of Russian troops in Syria’s bloody civil conflict. “This general will just be another author of crimes and brutality against Ukrainian civilians,” Sullivan said.
Western military analysts have downplayed Russia’s military prowess in recent weeks, describing its troops as diminished and demoralized by a surprising stiff resistance from volunteer defenders and a Ukraine army supplied with technology and weapons from NATO nations.
In a new assessment, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War predicted that “Russia will likely continue to throw badly damaged and partially reconstituted units piecemeal into offensive operations that make limited gains at great cost.” In a sign of Russia’s desperation, it pointed to recent intelligence from Western military officials that Russia’s armed forces have begun reenlisting retired soldiers to compensate for mounting casualties.
The think tank said Russia may end up securing much of the Donbas region if it is able to “trap or wear down Ukrainian forces,” but it said it is equally likely that Russian forces may be depleted before that happens.
In recent days, Ukrainian authorities have urged civilians to flee the east and parts of the south ahead of an expected Russian advance.
But there has been considerable unease following Friday’s missile strike at a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk that killed at least 52 and left more than 100 wounded. The station was crowded with civilians fleeing the Donbas.
Ukraine and its Western allies blamed Russia for the deadly strike at the Kramatorsk train station. Moscow denied carrying out the attack.
Those responsible for the railway strike would be discovered and would face war-crimes charges, vowed Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian president has made a similar pledge after murders of civilians came to light north of Kyiv.
“This is another war crime of Russia, for which everyone involved will be held accountable,” he said.
Zelenskyy’s rhetoric rose to Churchillian heights after a meeting Saturday with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The two leaders took a stroll through downtown Kyiv, a jaunt that would have been unimaginable two weeks ago, when armored columns of Russian tanks were poised at the northern reaches of the city.
Johnson was the latest in a series of high-ranking European officials to make the trek to the Ukrainian capital. More are expected in coming days as European leaders seek to show solidarity with Ukraine and its leader, whose global popularity has soared since the war began.
After Johnson’s visit, Britain said it was sending 120 armored vehicles and anti-shipping missile systems to Ukraine. Russia has targeted the country with missile attacks from land and sea, notably its sustained battering of Mariupol.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, a curfew remained in effect in Odesa, the crown jewel of Ukraine’s port cities on the Black Sea. Both Odesa and the nearby city of Mykolaiv have recently been the target of Russian strikes.
In the first days of the war, Mykolaiv, famed for its ship-building industries, stood in the path of a concerted Russian push to reach Odesa.
Weeks later, with Russia withdrawing some of its forces and reorienting its attention to the east, the threat — at least for the moment — appeared to have receded. On a sunny Sunday, residents took to the streets strolling through some of the city’s elegant parks and boulevards.
“We are getting used to this situation. We live, we want to live,” said Olga Volkova, a 32-year-old accountant walking with her partner, Vitaly Larionov.
Though the Russian army remains in Kherson, fewer than 40 miles to the southeast, Larionov and Volkova insist they have no interest in leaving Mykolaiv, despite frequent Russian shelling of the town.
Others, like Liudmilla, a pensioner who gave only her first name for reasons of privacy, said that she wasn’t “panicking” over the prospect of renewed hostilities in the city, but feared the momentum of the conflict.
“I think our government should think more about people,” she said.
“I’m afraid that Ukraine will fight to the last Ukrainian. Russians, Ukrainians, we should sit down and discuss. I want peace.”
———
(Bulos reported from Mykolaiv, McDonnell from Kyiv and Linthicum from Mexico City.)
