BORODYANKA, Ukraine – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its second week on Thursday an apparent tactical failure so far, with its main assault force stalled for days on a highway north of Kyiv and other advances halted at the outskirts of cities it is bombing into wastelands.
The number of refugees who have fled Ukraine rose to more than 1 million, the United Nations said. Hundreds of Russian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians have been killed, and Russia itself has been plunged into isolation never before experienced by an economy of such size.
Despite an initial battle plan that Western countries said was aimed at swiftly toppling the Kyiv government, Russia has captured only one Ukrainian city so far – the southern Dnipro River port of Kherson, which its tanks entered on Wednesday.
“The main body of the large Russian column advancing on Kyiv remains over 30 km from the center of the city having been delayed by staunch Ukrainian resistance, mechanical breakdown and congestion,” Britain’s defense ministry said in an intelligence update.
“The column has made little discernible progress in over three days,” it said. “Despite heavy Russian shelling, the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol remain in Ukrainian hands.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has remained in Kyiv, releasing regular video updates to the nation. In his latest message, he said Ukrainian lines were holding. “We have nothing to lose but our own freedom,” he said.
In Borodyanka, a tiny town 60 km northwest of Kyiv where locals had repelled a Russian assault, burnt out hulks of destroyed Russian armor were scattered on a highway, surrounded by buildings blasted into ruins. Flames from one burning apartment building lit up the pre-dawn sky. A dog barked as emergency workers walked through the rubble in the darkness.
“They started shooting from their APC towards the park in front of the post office,” a man recounted in the apartment where he was sheltering with his family. “Then those bastards started the tank and started shooting into the supermarket which was already burned. It caught fire again.
“An old man ran outside like crazy, with big round eyes, and said ‘give me a Molotov cocktail! I just set their APC on fire!… Give me some petrol, we’ll make a Molotov cocktail and burn the tank!.’”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov characterized the Western response to Russia’s actions as “hysteria.” which he said would pass. He said he expected a second round of peace talks with a Ukrainian delegation would take place on Thursday. A first meeting on Monday in Belarus yielded no progress.
Only Belarus, Eritrea, Syria and North Korea voted against an emergency resolution at the UN General Assembly condemning Russia’s “aggression.”
Having failed to capture major Ukrainian cities, Russia has shifted tactic in recent days, escalating its bombardment of them. Swathes of central Kharkiv, a city of 1.5 million people, have been blasted into rubble.
Mariupol, the main port of eastern Ukraine, has been surrounded under heavy bombardment, with no water or power. Officials say they cannot evacuate the wounded.
The city council compared the situation there to the World War Two siege of Leningrad, calling it the “genocide of the Ukrainian people.”
“In just seven days, one million people have fled Ukraine, uprooted by this senseless war. I have worked in refugee emergencies for almost 40 years, and rarely have I seen an exodus as rapid as this one,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
“Hour by hour, minute by minute, more people are fleeing the terrifying reality of violence.”
Military analysts say the Russian advance has been a tactical fiasco so far, stalled by failures of logistics and equipment maintenance, with columns now confined to roads as the spring thaw turns Ukrainian ground into mud. Each day the main attack force remains stalled on the highway north of Kyiv, its condition deteriorates further, said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military at the Wilson Center in Washington DC.
“The longer Russian forces sit forward, the lower their readiness and performance will be. Everything from state of tires, to supply availability, and in the end morale,” he tweeted.
But the great fear is that, as the likelihood of any rapid victory recedes, Russia will fall back on tactics it used in Syria and Chechnya, which left the large cities of Aleppo and Grozny in shattered ruins before they were finally overcome.
