According to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, Russian Forces (RF) commanders on Monday employed massive Iksandr ballistic missiles and cruise missiles in its already-traditional morning wave of long-range strikes, mostly launched from Belarus. One Iksandr reportedly cratered an airfield in the vicinity of Zhytomyr.
In the north, according to a General Staff statement, RF forces continued attempts to bypass Kyiv to the west with the construction of a military bridge over the Irpen’ River. Fighting was in progress, the statement said.
RF strikes against predominantly civilian targets seemed to intensify. In the north-eastern city of Izium, according to social media images, a powerful round of explosives blew out portions of walls and most windows of an apartment building. The censor.net.ua news agency published images of unexploded “dumb” – i.e. unguided – bombs landing in the town. Other images showed houses burning from RF air force bombs that, per the report, detonated in Izum’s residential Severno-Saltykova district.
Images from the northern town of Akhtyrka showed civilian buildings flattened or gutted by fire, and a petroleum plant set on fire. Also hit was the northern city of Chernihiv, where an Epitsentr household construction materials store was set afire, according to Ukrainian news sources. An army command north statement said RF forces fired anti-personnel cluster munitions into the town of Kiinka, near Chernihiv, and published images of unexploded shells.
The Kyiv region village of Borodyanske was also shelled, a UAF report said. The north-eastern city Kharkiv was, nevertheless, probably the most heavily pounded. Interior Ministry images made public in the morning showed more than twenty artillery rockets detonating in and near a Kharkiv power plant. Adjacent civilian buildings were visibly hit by the powerful area fire weapon.
One photograph, published by Novoe Vremya news magazine, showed an unexploded Smerch artillery rocket stuck in pavement in front of a Kharkiv pet supply store. Other Kharkiv images showed a demolished school and civilian corpses lying in the street. According to a statement by Kharkiv health services, more than 46 civilians received hospital treatment following the RF bombardment, and at least seven were killed. Ukraine’s Army Command North reported it struck back at RF vehicle concentrations in the vicinity of the Chernihiv Region village of Khoroshe Ozero with Uragan heavy artillery rockets.
There was no separate confirmation. According to the statement, UAF forces were holding a coherent perimeter across the line of contact, and intensity of RF attacks was falling off. In the RF-occupied Black Sea resort city Berdyansk, RF soldiers shot to death a local resident refusing to surrender his mobile phone, Ivan Arefev, head of the Zaporizhia Defense Council, told the censor.net news service. Later in the day unconfirmed social media images appeared showing Berdyansk homes and apartment buildings damaged after an RF armored column opened fire on them.
In the afternoon between 100 and 1,000 Berdyansk residents, depending on the report, gathered in the city square to protest. There were no reports of RF reaction to the demonstrators. In the northern city Chernihiv, RF soldiers opened fire on a civilian vehicle, but the driver survived, said Mayor Andryii Portnyi, in a press statement. In Ukraine’s east, tension was centered on the cities Mariupol and Volnovakha, officials said. Both were in UAF hands but RF forces had cut some roads leading out of Mariupol, Pavel Kirilenko, head of the Donetsk Region Defence Council, told media. Work was in progress to set up a “green corridor” for civilian evacuation from Mariupol, he said.
An afternoon attempt to bus civilians out of Volnovakha failed because RF forces fired rocket artillery at it, Kirilenko said. Elsewhere in the south, the city Mykolaiv was under Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) control and preparing defenses, Vitaly Kim, regional administration head, told media. Images from social media showed a Russian armored column halted in front of a civilian-built roadblock at the entrance to adjacent Energodar.
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in a morning video message pointed to 16 children killed and 46 injured during four days of war with the Russian Federation (RF) and said Ukrainians will not bow down and will keep on fighting. He called on the international community take immediate and decisive action to protect Ukrainian childrens’ lives. Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba in a statement said the RF has launched more than 180 cruise and ballistic missiles since Feb. 24.
The UAF estimates that since then it has destroyed 29 jet aircraft, 29 helicopters, six drones, 191 tanks, 861 armored vehicles, 291 trucks and jeeps, 80 fuel trucks, and six anti-aircraft systems. Across Ukraine reports continued of small RF-controlled groups aiming to cause panic and confusion. In Mariupol, Ukrainian police allegedly captured an RF sniper with orders to fire on civilians. Government information networks from national down to villages warned residents of RF saboteur teams possibly in the area.
Martial law with road checkpoints, full lockdown to civilian movement and not visible lights at night was effect in Kyiv and other cities and towns. Early news reports from Russo-Ukrainian talks on the Belarusian border said Kyiv’s and Moscow’s positions were practically unchanged from the outset of the war and diametrically opposed on issues like ownership of Crimea, Ukrainian NATO membership, and Ukrainian military capacity. News agencies said the talks started at 1300 and ended at 1800. The two sides are reported to have agreed to continue the talks after conferring with their respective leaderships.
