Russia expands its offensive in Ukraine with attacks in the west

Russia on Friday expanded its military offensive on Ukraine attacking for the first time near airports in the west of the country, while observers and satellite images indicated that his troops, long stalled in a caravan outside the capital, Kiev, tried to maneuver to surround the city.

With the invasion now in its third week, the United States and its allies were preparing to step up efforts to isolate Moscow by revoking Moscow’s trade status. “MFN” from Russia. The decision follows mounting criticism over a deadly Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital in a key port city, Mariupol, under a 10-day siege.

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The attacks in the west could be the Kremlin’s message that no part of the country is safe. According to Western and Ukrainian officials, Russian forces have struggled with stiffer-than-expected resistance and supply and morale hitches. At the moment, their greatest advances are in cities in the south and east, while they remain stagnant in the north and around Kiev.

Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and six people were wounded in the Russian airstrike on a military airfield in Lutsk, said the top official of the Volyn region, Yuriy Pohulyayko. In Ivano-Frankivsk, its mayor, Ruslan Martsinkiv, said he ordered residents to take shelter in shelters following an aerial alert.

According to Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, his troops used high-precision long-range weapons to disable the Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk military airports, but he did not provide further details.

Meanwhile, new satellite images appeared to show that the huge convoy that was on the outskirts of the capital has dispersed into towns and forests near Kiev, with artillery pieces in position to attack, in another potentially nefarious move.

The giant convoy massed outside Kiev last week, but its progress appeared to slow amid reports of food and fuel shortages. US officials said Ukrainian troops attacked the military column with anti-tank missiles.

Satellite images from Maxar Technologies showed the 64-kilometer (40-mile) column of vehicles, tanks and artillery equipment has been broken up and relocated, the company explained. Armored units were seen in towns near the Antonov airport, north of the city. Some of the vehicles drove into the forest, Maxar reported, with towed howitzers in firing position.

It appears the vehicles in the caravan were moving west, trying to circle the city from the south, said Jack Watling, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. This could indicate that they are preparing “for a siege instead of for an assault” from the capital, he added.

The British Ministry of Defense pointed out that, after carrying outr “limited progress” because of logistical problems and strong Ukrainian resistance. Russian forces were trying to “readjust and reposition” heading into the offensive against Kiev.

On the other hand, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Moscow was aware of “more than 16,000 requests” from Middle Eastern countries, many of them from people he claimed helped Russia against the Islamic State extremist group, according to a Kremlin transcript.

Ukrainian authorities will try again on Friday to bring aid to Mariupol, a port of 430,000 inhabitants in the south of the country, under intense Russian siege. More than 1,300 people have died in the 10-day siege against the frigid city, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

Residents have no heat or phone connection, and many lack electricity. At night, they drop below freezing point, and during the day they are just above. The bodies are buried in mass graves. The streets are littered with burning vehicles, broken glass and smashed trees.

Grocery stores and pharmacies were emptied days ago by those trying to get supplies, according to Sacha Volkov, a local Red Cross official. There’s a black market for vegetables, you can’t get meat, and people steal gasoline from cars, he added.

It is difficult to find places protected from shelling and basements are reserved for women and children, Volkov said. Residents, he noted, are fighting each other: “People have started attacking each other for food.”

Vereshchuk announced efforts to create new humanitarian corridors to bring aid to people in areas occupied or under Russian attack around the southern cities of Kherson; Chernigov in the north and Kharkiv in the east.

Some 2.5 million people have fled the country since the start of the invasion, the International Organization for Migration said on Friday. Around 100,000 people were evacuated in the last two days from seven cities besieged by Russia in the north and center, including the suburbs of Kiev, said the president, Volodomyr Zelenskyy.

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Source: Elcomercio

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