Russian forces regroup on the outskirts of Kyiv after setbacks

A girl plays inside a makeshift camp, inside the VIP hall at the train station in Lviv, Ukraine, for women and children who fled the ongoing Russian invasion before their transfer to Poland.

• Most Ukrainians believe they will beat Russia: pollster President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said yesterday that Ukraine had reached a “strategic turning point” in the conflict with Russia, but Russian forces bombarded cities across the country and appeared to be regrouping for a possible assault on the capital Kyiv. The governor of the Kharkiv region, on the Russian border, said that a psychiatric hospital had been hit, and the mayor of the city of Kharkiv said about 50 schools had been destroyed there. In the besieged southern city of Mariupol, the city council said at least 1,582 civilians had been killed as a result of Russian shelling and a 12-day blockade that has left hundreds of thousands trapped with no food, water, heat or power. Russia’s defence ministry said the Black Sea port was now completely surrounded and Ukrainian officials accused Russia of deliberately preventing civilians getting out and humanitarian convoys getting in. A new effort to evacuate civilians along a humanitarian corridor appeared to have failed. “The situation is critical,” Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko said. A large majority of Ukrainians believe their country will be able to repel Russia’s invasion, a Ukrainian pollster said yesterday. The Rating polling agency said it had surveyed 1,200 people living across Ukraine – except in the separatist Donbas region and Russia-annexed Crimea – in telephone interviews on March 8-9. Some 92% of respondents believed Ukraine would be able to repel Russia’s attack, while 6% felt hopeless. Of those with high hopes of victory, 57% believed it would take weeks, while around 18 percent thought the war would last several months. Eighty per cent of respondents said they were helping to defend the country in one way or another. Among them, 39% said they were helping people and the army as “volunteers”, while 37% said they were contributing financially. Western countries meanwhile took more steps to try to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to end his assault on Ukraine. US President Joe Biden said the G7 industrialised nations would revoke Russia’s “most favoured nation” trade status. He also announced a US ban on imports of Russian seafood, alcohol and diamonds. European Union leaders meeting in France said they were ready to impose harsher economic sanctions on Russia and might give Ukraine more funds for arms. However, they rejected Ukraine’s request to join the bloc. At a meeting with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin said that there were “certain positive shifts” in talks with Kyiv, but did not elaborate. With the Russian assault now in its third week, Zelenskiy, who has rallied his people with a series of addresses, said Ukraine had “already reached a strategic turning point”. “It is impossible to say how many days we still have (ahead of us) to free Ukrainian land. However, we can say that we will do it,” he said. “We are already moving towards our goal, our victory.” Russia’s main attack force has been stalled on roads north of Kyiv, having failed in what Western analysts say was an initial plan for a lightning assault. However, images released by private US satellite firm Maxar showed armoured units manoeuvring in and through towns close to an airport on Kyiv’s northwest outskirts, site of fighting since Russia landed paratroopers there in the first hours of the war. Other elements had repositioned near the settlement of Lubyanka just to the north, with artillery howitzers in firing positions, Maxar said. Britain’s defence ministry said Russia appeared to gearing up for new offensive activity in the coming days that would probably include operations against Kyiv. However, the Russian ground forces were still making only limited progress, hampered by logistical problems and Ukrainian resistance, it said in its intelligence update. The Ukrainian general staff said Russian forces were regrouping after taking heavy losses. Ukrainian troops had pushed some back to “unfavourable positions” near the Belarus border to the rear of the main Russian column, it said. “Our opponent has been halted in practically every direction by air strikes, rocket fire and ground attacks,” presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych told a news briefing. He said Ukrainian fighters had staged counter-attacks near Kyiv and in Kharkiv. Kyiv mayor and former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko told Reuters that nearly 2mn people were still left in the city out of a pre-war population of 3.5mn. He said the capital had enough essential supplies to last a couple of weeks, and supply lines in and out remained open for now. Ukrainian authorities said that near the eastern town of Izyum, a psychiatric hospital had been hit. Emergency services said no one was hurt as the patients were already sheltering in the basement. Kharkiv governor Oleh Synegubov called the attack a war crime. Reuters could not verify the report and there was no comment from Moscow. Moscow denies that it has been targeting civilians in what it calls a “special operation” to disarm and “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Three air strikes yesterday near a kindergarten in the central city of Dnipro killed at least one person, state emergency services said. The mayor of Lutsk said four people had been killed and six wounded in an attack on an airfield – a rare strike on a target deep in western Ukraine, far from the battlefields in the north, east and south. In Kharkiv, hundreds of people were sheltering in metro stations deep under the streets. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the city was under relentless bombardment and about 50 schools had been destroyed. Moscow said its separatist allies in the southeast had captured the town of Volnovakha, north of Mariupol.