The heads of three governments in the European Union travelled Tuesday to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in an extraordinary attempt to demonstrate support for Ukraine as Russian attacks raged across the country and targeted the besieged capital.
The dramatic visit from top officials in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia to a city that was shaken Tuesday morning by new blasts came amid a spiralling humanitarian crisis and a new push to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As many as three million people have fled the war-torn country in the three weeks since the Russian invasion began, according to new estimates.
The White House announced Tuesday that President Joe Biden will travel to Brussels next week to meet with European leaders for a Nato summit, a trip meant to reinforce the US commitment to the alliance as worries grow about Russian aggression creeping up to Ukraine's boundaries.
The scene Tuesday was eerily familiar: widespread death and destruction, coupled with scant signs that the conflict would soon abate.
A suspected Russian missile attack on an apartment building Tuesday killed at least four people in Kyiv, where the mayor announced a curfew, citing a “difficult and dangerous moment.”
Officials were once again struggling to get humanitarian aid to the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, which is surrounded by Russian troops. Videos captured blasts in at least three locations in the heart of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, on Monday night.
A Fox News cameraman, Pierre Zakrzewski, was killed in an attack Monday alongside a Ukrainian colleague, Oleksandra Kuvshynova, the news network announced Tuesday.
Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova were traveling with Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall when their vehicle was struck by incoming fire. Hall has been hospitalized, Fox News said Monday, but no further update has been given on his condition.
Talks between Ukraine and Russia resumed Tuesday, but they resulted in little progress.
Zelensky on Wednesday is planning to give a virtual joint address to the US Congress, which could increase pressure on Biden to provide military planes to Ukraine or impose a no-fly zone.
Zelensky has previously requested such assistance, but so far Biden has resisted amid concerns that the aid could draw the United States into direct combat with Russia, a fellow nuclear power.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki continued to argue against the United States imposing that measure.
“A no-fly zone is escalatory and could prompt a war with Russia, a major nuclear power,” she said at a briefing.
The group of European leaders who came to Kyiv — Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa — traveled by train.
Their arrival marked the first time foreign leaders have entered the Ukrainian capital since Russia's attack began 20 days earlier. The visit was meant to “confirm the unequivocal support of the entire European Union for the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine,” Fiala wrote in a Facebook post, which added that he and his counterparts were coming as representatives of the European Council.
The presence in Ukraine of Central European leaders was especially notable two days after Russian missiles struck a military training base near Ukraine's border with Poland, bringing the war closer to Nato and EU territory.
Though Russian forces approaching Kyiv appear to have stalled, they have made progress elsewhere. Russian military officials claimed its forces have taken full control of the Kherson region in the south of the country.
British defence officials said Tuesday in an intelligence update that Russia is ramping up efforts to “subvert Ukrainian democracy” by installing its own mayors and seeking to stage a referendum in Kherson in a bid to establish the Russian-occupied area as a “breakaway republic.” That would make it similar to separatist areas in Donetsk and Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine.
Washington Post