At least 140,000 residential buildings in Ukraine destroyed or damaged. More than 3.5 million people have become homeless. More than 12 million displaced. On Tuesday, new figures were added to the ruthless accounting system that measures losses from the Russian invasion.
Every day the bloodshed, disruption and destruction grow. Two civilians were killed and five others seriously injured as they tried to flee the Russian-occupied territory in the southern Kherson region, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday. The administrator of the neighboring region of Kryvyi Rih said Russian troops had fired at their red minibus at “point distance”.
In the east, the focus of recent Russian offensives, an emergency evacuation train carrying “women, children, the elderly, many people with reduced mobility” found its way to safer territory in the west on Tuesday morning, Iryna Vereshchuk, a deputy prime minister, said in a statement. .
President Volodymyr Zelensky has pleaded with some 200,000 civilians in the east to evacuate the already depopulated areas near the front lines where Russian artillery has devastated entire cities. Those who remain are disproportionately the old, the weak, the Russian sympathizers or the just stubborn. Most do not already have essential infrastructure such as electricity, heat and clean water.
If they wait for the cold weather to kick in this fall, Ms. Vereshchuk said — by which time Russia may have resumed major offensive operations — the Kiev government will be able to do little for them.
A month after taking full control of the Luhansk region, the easternmost part of Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russian forces are regrouping for an anticipated attempt to conquer what they do not yet control from neighboring countries. Donetsk region. But the battle never quite ends, and every day the Russians are still shelling targets across the country.
The Ukrainian army said on Tuesday it had repulsed several attempts by the Russians to advance towards the city of Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region. In the south, Ukrainian forces have pushed back the Russians and are expected to make a major effort to retake the strategic city of Kherson.
President Biden on Monday announced an additional $550 million in weapons to Ukraine, bringing US investment in the war effort since the February 24 invasion of Russia to more than $8 billion. helped the Ukrainians stabilize their defensive positions in the east and mount a counter-offensive in the south.
The most recent arms transfer by the US includes ammunition for the HIMARS rocket launchers used to destroy Russian command posts and ammunition depots, as well as for US 155-millimeter howitzers already in use by Ukrainian forces, said John F. Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council.
Our coverage of the war between Russia and Ukraine
“The power of the democratic world is being felt on the battlefield in Ukraine this week,” said Mr. Zelensky in his nightly address to the nation.
But Ukraine’s determination to defend itself has come at a terrible price that can only be described in numbers. The country does not release public censuses of military casualties, and civilian casualties in areas overrun by Russia are guesses at best, but tens of thousands of Ukrainians are estimated to have been killed and many more injured.
The Kremlin insists it only hits military targets, a claim belied by images of destroyed condominiums, homes, schools, farms, hospitals and shops. Ukraine’s defense ministry said on Tuesday that at least 140,000 residential buildings had been destroyed or damaged, leaving more than 3.5 million homeless.
The UN refugee agency said the number of people who have left Ukraine since Feb. 24 has surpassed 10 million, although many of them returned later. The United Nations now counts about 6.2 million Ukrainians as refugees who moved elsewhere in Europe during the war, and 6.3 million as “internally displaced persons”, people who have fled the fighting but remain in Ukraine – by far the largest migration crisis in Europe since the aftermath of World War II.
That means at least 30 percent of the estimated pre-war population of 41 million people has been displaced from their homes.
The US State Department on Tuesday announced a major new set of sanctions, including economic and travel restrictions, targeting Russian companies, institutions and individuals associated with the Kremlin or its war efforts. The list includes several billionaire business magnates, as well as Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast and member of the Russian State Duma who is widely described as Putin’s romantic partner.
In the United States, lawmakers have pressured the Biden administration to label Russia as a state sponsor of terror, a designation Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has so far resisted. On Tuesday, Russia’s foreign ministry warned it could respond to such a move by cutting direct ties with Washington and taking other unspecified measures.
“A logical consequence of this irresponsible step could be the severance of diplomatic ties, after which Washington risks crossing the point of no return with all the consequences that entails,” said Maria Zakharova, the ministry’s spokeswoman.
Russia’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Ukraine’s Azov regiment, a group with far-right roots, is a terrorist organization that could pave the way for imprisoned soldiers charged with terrorism rather than being treated as prisoners of war. Many of the troops who took a final position in Mariupol, tying up the Russian troops, and living in bunkers under the vast Azovstal steelworks complex for nearly three months before surrendering were from that regiment.
Under an agreement with Turkey and the United Nations, Russia has agreed to allow such ships, subject to inspection, to pass through the naval blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. Turkish officials said the first ship, the Razoni, will be inspected Wednesday morning at the entrance to the Bosphorus before proceeding to its destination, the port of Tripoli in Lebanon.
More than 20 million tons of food have been stuck in Ukrainian ports for more than five months, and the backlog is widening as more harvests are done – even as shortages and rising prices lead to growing world hunger. Aid groups welcomed the prospect of the grain being released but said much more needed to be done to prevent famine in regions ravaged by drought and global warming.
Reporting contributed by Michael Crowley and Matina Stevis-Gridneff.
