Russian forces have taken control of a town where workers at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant live, the governor of Kyiv region said on Saturday, and fighting was reported in the streets of the besieged southern port of Mariupol.
After more than four weeks of conflict, Russia has failed to seize any major Ukrainian city and on Friday Moscow signalled it was scaling back its military ambitions to focus on territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists in the east.
However, intense fighting was reported in a number of places on Saturday, suggesting there would be no swift let-up in the conflict, which has killed thousands of people, sent some 3.7 million abroad and driven more than half of Ukraine’s children from their homes, according to the United Nations.
Russian troops seized the town of Slavutych, which is close to the border with Belarus and is where workers at the nearby Chernobyl plant live, said Oleksandr Pavlyuk, the governor of Kyiv region.
He said the Russians had opened fire into the air and thrown stun grenades to disperse some residents who unfurled a large Ukrainian flag and shouted “Glory to Ukraine” in protest. Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
Slavutych sits just outside the so-called exclusion zone around Chernobyl – which in 1986 was the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster – where Ukrainian staff have continued to work even after the plant itself was seized by Russian forces soon after the start of the February 24 invasion.
On the other side of the country, in , Mayor Vadym Boichenko said the situation in the encircled city remained critical, with street fighting taking place in the centre.
The city has been devastated by weeks of Russian fire.
In an address on Saturday to Qatar’s Doha Forum, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy compared the destruction of Mariupol to the destruction inflicted on the Syrian city of Aleppo by combined Syrian and Russian forces in the civil war.
Ukrainian National Guard and special operations units simulate a crisis situation in an urban settlement, in the abandoned city of Pripyat near Chernobyl.Credit:
“They are destroying our ports,” Zelenskiy said, warning of dire consequence if his country – one of the world’s major grains producers – could not export its foodstuffs. “The absence of exports from Ukraine will deal a blow to countries worldwide.”
Speaking via video link, he also called on energy producing countries to increase their output so that Russia cannot use its massive oil and gas wealth to “blackmail” other nations.
US President Joe Biden saw Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov on Saturday in the Polish capital Warsaw in his first face-to-face meeting with top Ukrainian officials since the start of the war.
Biden’s visit to Poland was his final stop on a trip to Europe that has underscored his opposition to the Russian invasion, his solidarity with Ukraine and his determination to work closely with Western allies to confront the crisis.
Zelensky late on Friday pushed for further talks with Moscow after the Russian Defence Ministry said a first phase of its operation was mostly complete and that it would now focus on the Donbass region bordering Russia, which has pro-Moscow separatist enclaves.
Breakaway Russian-backed forces have been fighting Ukrainian forces in Donbass since 2014.
Reframing Russia’s goals may make it easier for President Vladimir Putin to claim a face-saving victory, analysts said.
Moscow has until now said its goals for what it calls its “special military operation” include demilitarising and “denasifying” its neighbour. Ukraine and its Western allies have called that a baseless pretext for an unprovoked invasion.
The United Nations has confirmed 1,081 civilian deaths and 1,707 injuries in Ukraine since the invasion but says the real toll is likely higher. Some 136 children have been killed so far during the invasion, Ukraine’s prosecutor general office said on Saturday.
Reuters
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