30th March, 2022
Russia has not kept its words of scaling down attacks on Ukrainian cities outside of Donbas as its forces pounded areas around Kyiv and another city overnight.
The shelling further tempered optimism about any progress in talks aimed at ending the punishing war.
Ukrainian officials said Russian shelling hit homes, shops, libraries and other “civilian infrastructure” in the northern city of Chernihiv and on the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv.
Russia did not spell out what exactly it planned to do differently.
While the promise initially raised hopes that a path toward peace was coming into view, Ukraine’s president and others cautioned that the remarks could merely be bluster and the Kremlin’s spokesman said he saw no breakthrough in the talks.
The barrages came as Britain’s Defense Ministry warned that while heavy losses have forced some Russian units to return to Belarus and Russia, Moscow would likely compensate for any reduction in ground maneuvers by using mass artillery and missile strikes.
The Ukrainian military, meanwhile, said Russian troops were intensifying their attacks around the eastern city of Izyum and the eastern Donetsk region, after redeploying some units from other areas.
Oleksandr Pavliuk, the head of the Kyiv region military administration, said Wednesday that Russian shells targeted residential areas and civilian infrastructure in the Bucha, Brovary and Vyshhorod regions around the capital.
They weren’t the only attacks by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Wednesday that the military targeted fuel depots in two towns in central Ukraine with air-launched long-range cruise missiles.
Russian forces also hit a Ukrainian special forces headquarters in the southern Mykolaiv region, he said, and two ammunition depots in the eastern Donetsk region.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces noted intensified shelling and attacks in the Donetsk area, where it say Russian forces were focused on trying to win control over the besieged city of Mariupol and other cities.
Donetsk is in the eastern industrial heartland of Donbas, where the Russian military says it has shifted its attention.
Top Russian military officials have said twice in recent days that their main goal now is the “liberation” of Donbas, where Moscow-backed rebels have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014.