Russian forces still attacking Kyiv as Ukraine takes back some areas, says Zelensky
Warning: This story includes images of violence and death
The latest:
- Number of Ukrainian refugees nears 4 million, UN says.
- Northwestern suburb of Kyiv 'liberated' from Russians, mayor says.
- Biden 'not walking anything back' after saying Putin 'cannot remain in power.'
- Cyberattack knocks Ukraine's national telecom almost completely offline.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Monday that Russian forces are still attacking Kyiv, despite being driven out of Irpin, a suburb northwest of the capital that has seen heavy fighting.
The mayor of Irpin said Monday the city has been "liberated" from Russian troops.
"We have good news today — Irpin has been liberated," Mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said, adding that it expected further attacks and would defend itself.
Irpin gained wide attention after photos circulated of a mother and her two children who were killed by shelling as they tried to flee, their bodies lying on the pavement with luggage and a pet carrier nearby.
Zelensky said the Russians remain in control of northern suburbs and are trying to regroup after losing Irpin. He urged Ukrainians not to let up in the war.
"We still have to fight, we have to endure," Zelensky said in his nighttime video address to the nation. "We can't express our emotions now. We can't raise expectations, simply so that we don't burn out."
Zelensky said the situation remains tense in the northeast, around Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkhiv, and also in the eastern Donbas region and in the south around Mariupol, which remains blockaded by Russian troops. The president said no humanitarian corridors could be opened Monday out of the besieged city.
Zelensky said he spoke Monday with the leaders of Azerbaijan, Britain, Canada and Germany, urging them to strengthen the sanctions against Russia.
Additionally, a senior U.S. defence official said the U.S. believes the Ukrainians have retaken the town of Trostyanets, south of Sumy, in the east.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence assessments, said Russian forces largely remained in defensive positions near Kyiv and were making little forward progress elsewhere in the country.
The official said Russia appeared to be de-emphasizing ground operations near Kyiv and concentrating more on the Donbas, the predominantly Russian-speaking eastern region of Ukraine where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting a separatist war for the past eight years.
Russian attempts to swiftly capture the capital Kyiv, Kharkiv and other big cities in the northeast have been thwarted by well-organized Ukrainian defences and logistical challenges that stalled the Russian offensive.
Russian forces have been pounding the outskirts of Kyiv and other cities with artillery and air raids from a distance while putting their ground offensive on hold.
'Humanitarian catastrophe' in Mariupol
Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne has quoted the mayor of Mariupol as saying that about 160,000 people remain in the besieged port city and that a "humanitarian catastrophe" would ensue if more evacuations are not possible.
Vadym Boichenko said on Monday that Russian forces were preventing civilians from evacuating from the city and had been turning back some who tried to make it out.
The city, which had a pre-war population of more than 400,000, has seen some of the worst conditions since Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Russian forces have pounded the city, and scores of civilians have been unable to escape, with no access to essentials and cut off from communication with the shelling of cell, radio and TV towers.
Biden stands by Putin comments
U.S. President Joe Biden said Monday that he is "not walking anything back" after his weekend comment that Russian President Vladimir Putin "cannot remain in power," although Biden insisted he's not calling for regime change in Moscow.
"I was expressing the moral outrage that I felt toward this man," he said. "I wasn't articulating a policy change."
The U.S. president's jarring remark about Putin, which came at the end of a Saturday speech in Warsaw that was intended to rally democracies for a long global struggle against autocracy, stirred controversy in the United States and rattled some allies in Western Europe.
Biden on Monday rejected the idea that his comment could escalate tensions over the war in Ukraine or that it would feed Russian propaganda about Western aggression.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday that Biden's statement "undoubtedly causes alarm." He added that the Kremlin will carefully monitor the U.S. president's statements.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres responded to Biden's comment on Monday by saying, "We need military de-escalation and rhetoric de-escalation."
Another oil depot hit
A missile attack hit an oil depot in western Ukraine late Monday, Rivne's regional governor said, marking the second attack on oil facilities in the region and the latest in a series of such attacks in recent days.
Western Ukraine has not seen ground combat, but missiles have struck oil depots and a military plant in Lviv, a major city close to Poland where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have gone to escape fighting elsewhere.
Zelensky suggested in an interview with Russian journalists released on Sunday that the attacks on oil depots are intended to disrupt the planting season in Ukraine, which is a major grain producer.
Discussed with <a href="https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JustinTrudeau</a> 🇺🇦🇨🇦 cooperation in the fields of defense and sanctions pressure on Russia. Informed about the crimes of Russia and the course of the negotiation process. I’m grateful for the willingness to consider additional macro-financial assistance for Ukraine.
—@ZelenskyyUaMillions of refugees
The number of refugees who have flooded out of Ukraine is nearing four million, but data shows fewer people have crossed the border in recent days.
The total exodus through Sunday now stands at 3.87 million, according to the latest tally announced Monday by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In the previous 24 hours, only 45,000 people crossed Ukraine's borders to seek safety, the slowest one-day count yet.
On Sunday, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says it has confirmed 1,119 civilian deaths and 1,790 people injured since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Cyberattack causes severe outage
A "massive" cyberattack knocked Ukraine's national telecommunications provider Ukrtelecom almost completely offline Monday in what network monitors called its most severe outage since Russia's Feb. 24 invasion.
The chair of Ukraine's state service for special communication, Yurii Shchyhol, blamed "the enemy" in a statement without specifically naming Russia. So that service could continue to Ukraine's military, most customers were cut off, he said.
The outage began Monday morning and persisted into the evening, when Shchyhol said services were being restored. Alp Toker, director of the London-based monitor Netblocks, said connectivity for Ukrtelecom has collapsed to just 13 per cent of pre-war levels.
Ukrtelecom is the seventh-largest provider in Ukraine in traffic moved but, as the pre-independence incumbent, it's likely the lone provider in much of rural Ukraine, said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at the network management firm Kentik.
With files from Reuters