KYIV — Russian military vehicles pushed into Ukraine’s second-largest city on Sunday and explosions rocked oil and gas installations on a fourth day of fighting in the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two.
Russian soldiers and armored vehicles were seen in different parts of the northeastern city of Kharkiv and firing could be heard, a witness said. A burning tank was visible in a video posted by the government.
Russian troops blew up a natural gas pipeline in Kharkiv before daybreak, a Ukrainian state agency said, sending a burning cloud up into the darkness.
“The Russian enemy’s light vehicles have broken into Kharkiv, including the city center,” regional Governor Oleh Sinegubov said. “Ukraine’s armed forces are destroying the enemy. We ask civilians not to go out.”
Ukraine’s Western allies ratcheted up their response to Russia’s land, sea and air invasion late on Saturday with sanctions to banish major Russian banks from the main global payments system and other measures aimed at limiting Moscow’s use of a $630 million war chest of central bank reserves.
Finland and Sweden became the latest European countries to close their airspace to Russian flights, and EU could follow suit with a coordinated European-wide ban, an official said.
Ukrainian forces were holding off Russian troops advancing on the capital Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. But shelling hit civilian infrastructure and targets including ambulances, he said.
A United Nations agency reported 64 civilian deaths and Ukraine claimed to have killed more than 4,000 Russian soldiers. Reuters was not able to verify the numbers.
More than 368,000 refugees, mainly women and children, have poured into neighboring countries, clogging railways, roads and borders since Russian President Vladimir Putin, 69, unleashed what he called a special military operation on Thursday.
Ignoring weeks of frantic diplomacy and sanctions threats by Western nations seeking to avoid war, Putin has justified the invasion, saying “neo-Nazis” rule Ukraine and threaten Russia’s security – a charge Kyiv and Western governments say is baseless propaganda.
The Kremlin sent a diplomatic delegation to neighboring Belarus offering talks, but Ukraine rejected the offer, saying Belarus had been complicit in the invasion. Ukraine was happy to hold talks elsewhere, Zelenskiy said.
Russian missiles found their mark overnight, including a strike that set an oil terminal ablaze in Vasylkiv, southwest of Kyiv, the town’s mayor said. Blasts sent huge flames and billowing black smoke into the night sky, online posts showed.
“The enemy wants to destroy everything,” said the mayor, Natalia Balasinovich.
RESISTANCE
Russian-backed separatists in the eastern province of Luhansk said a Ukrainian missile had blown up an oil terminal in the town of Rovenky.
Reuters witnesses in Kyiv reported occasional blasts and gunfire through the night, then three blasts after air raid sirens went off shortly before 9 a.m. (0600 GMT).
Ukrainian leaders were defiant.
“We have withstood and are successfully repelling enemy attacks. The fighting goes on,” Zelenskiy said in a video message from the streets of Kyiv posted on his social media.
A US defense official on Saturday said Ukraine’s forces were putting up “viable” resistance to Russia’s air, land and sea advance.
The Kremlin said its troops were advancing again “in all directions” and Putin thanked Russia’s special forces, singling out those who are “heroically fulfilling their military duty” in Ukraine.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser said about 3,500 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded. Western officials have said intelligence showed Russia suffering higher casualties than expected.
Russia has not released casualty figures and Reuters was unable to verify tolls or the precise picture on the ground. — Reuters
