Ukrainian forces put up a fierce battle to carry capital

The Ukrainian defence forces, outmanned and outgunned, waged a ferocious resistance to the Russian invasion, battling to maintain management of the capital, Kyiv, and different cities across the nation.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, posted a video on Twitter on Saturday, telling the general public to not imagine false reviews.

Не вірте фейкам. pic.twitter.com/wiLqmCuz1p

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) February 26, 2022

He was alive. Kyiv had not fallen. Any reviews of Ukraine laying down its arms was a lie, Zelenskyy stated.

“I’m here. We are not putting down any arms. We will protect our country, because our weapons are our truth. The truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will protect them all,” he stated.

“That is it. That’s what I wanted to tell you. Glory to Ukraine.”

His feedback, launched earlier than 9 am, got here as combating intensified in Kyiv. What till three days in the past had been a thriving European metropolis has been remodeled right into a battle zone. Russian troops pressed in from all instructions.

There was intense road combating, and bursts of gunfire and explosions may very well be heard throughout the town, together with its coronary heart, Maidan sq., the place in 2014 Ukrainian protests led to the toppling of a pro-Moscow authorities.

The Russian navy has a decisive edge in cyberwarfare, tanks, heavy weaponry, missiles, fighter planes and warships. In sheer numbers, its navy dwarfs that of Ukraine’s.

Russia has established assault traces into three cities — Kyiv within the north, Kharkiv within the northeast and Kherson within the south — and Ukrainian troops are combating to carry all three. The Pentagon reported late Friday that the Russians didn’t seem like answerable for a single main inhabitants heart. Significantly, the senior U.S defence official stated, Ukrainian command and management stays intact.

The Ukrainian authorities reported lots of of Russian troopers have been killed within the conflict, together with scores of their very own troopers, whereas the Russian ministry of protection issued an announcement on Saturday morning that made no point out of any casualties or something in regards to the battle for Kyiv.

The Russian invasion began with focused airstrikes earlier than daybreak Thursday, however on the third day of the conflict, bloody battles have been usually being waged in shut quarters. Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian information website, citing eyewitnesses, reported fight 400 yards from Kyiv’s metropolis heart, Maidan Square.

All Ukrainian males of combating age are being drafted into service, and tens of 1000’s are eagerly signing up. Ukrainians have been requested to make Molotov cocktails. And there have been tearful scenes at airports in western Ukraine as wives kissed their husbands goodbye earlier than they headed to the entrance.

The nation has rallied round its president, Zelenskyy, a former comic.

To Zelenskyy and different officers, the target of the Russian invasion of a neighbouring nation that posed no navy risk is to topple the federal government.

Zelenskyy has stated that he’s “target No. 1.”

As battles have been waged across the metropolis on Saturday morning, there have been reviews of clashes close to the town’s prepare station and alongside a central thoroughfare, Bohdan Khmelnytskyi Street, main from Victory Square towards the town centre, in response to the witness accounts. Along that road, nearer to the town centre, bursts of gunfire may very well be heard by the evening.

“We are stopping the horde, so far as we can,” the secretary of the Ukrainian Security and Defense Council, Oleksy Danilov, stated round 7 a.m. Saturday. “The situation is under control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and citizens of Kyiv.”

In dozens of interviews within the tense hours earlier than the invasion and within the days after, Ukrainians struggled to know how a rustic at peace so immediately discovered itself at conflict. For many Ukrainians, the reply was present in Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

This is Putin’s conflict. But what frightened individuals maybe as a lot as the specter of missiles and bombs, was that they didn’t know what he needed.

The worry was evident within the drive from Kyiv to a small village outdoors the town. Military convoys had changed households happening trip or visiting pals. Where as soon as Kyiv was often known as a metropolis the place the music performed a contact too loud in its cafes, the incessant wail of air raid sirens drowned out all pleasure.

The worry was evident within the faces of the individuals in search of security in western Ukraine, after they emerged from 20-hour prepare rides in packed carriages that have been stored pitch-black to keep away from being focusing on by Russian rockets.

From Lviv within the west, to Odessa within the south, and Kharkiv and practically all factors in between, individuals huddled in air raid shelters and lined up and financial institution machines and stocked up on necessities.

While the Russians, for the second, weren’t answerable for any metropolis, it was solely the primary part of a battle that might stretch into weeks or longer.