Putin Targets Ukrainian Civilian Areas in Tactical Shift As Russian Airstrikes Hit Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial And Kyiv TV Tower

Russian forces bombarded the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and hit the capital’s TV tower as Moscow, frustrated in its plans for a quick victory, shifted to a new strategy of pummeling civilian areas in an attempt to demoralize Ukrainian resistance.

On Tuesday afternoon, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it would strike Ukrainian intelligence and communications facilities in central Kyiv that it said are being used for “information attacks” against Russia, and urged residents living nearby to leave for their own safety. Western diplomats took the warning as a signal that a massive strike on Kyiv’s residential areas was imminent. Some of the remaining staff at foreign embassies left Ukraine’s capital.

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Live-cam footage from Kharkiv’s central Freedom Square showed a missile landing just outside the local government’s headquarters at 8:01 a.m. local time, with a fireball charring nearby buildings and cars. Ukraine’s national emergency service said seven people were killed and 24 injured in the strike.

Later in the day, additional Russian airstrikes hit Kharkiv’s residential neighborhoods, killing more than 10 civilians, local authorities said.

“A missile targeting the central square of a city is open, undisguised terrorism,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, adding that numerous children had died in other attacks. “It’s terrorism that aims to break us, to break our resistance.”

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The Tuesday afternoon strike on Kyiv’s iconic TV tower, erected in 1973, killed five people who were nearby, Ukrainian officials said. It also temporarily disabled the broadcasting ability of Ukraine’s central TV channels, Ukraine’s communications authority said. The authority said it would switch on reserve broadcast facilities. The TV tower stands in the Babyn Yar area, where much of Kyiv’s Jewish population was massacred by the Nazis during World War II.

In an emotional video address to the European Parliament later Tuesday, Mr. Zelensky said Ukrainians were dying in a struggle for the country’s survival. “We are giving our lives for the right to be equal,” he said, unshaven and wearing a green army T-shirt. “Prove that you are with us and will not let us go.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine -launched six days ago by President Vladimir Putin with the aim of overthrowing the country’s elected government and ending its alignment with the West—has made slower progress than most military analysts had expected. Russian forces are struggling with fierce Ukrainian resistance and logistical problems.

A senior U.S. defense official said the Russian advance has stalled amid food and fuel shortages, Ukrainian resistance, and slower than expected troop movement toward the capital. The Russians “are regrouping and trying to adjust to the challenges they have had,” the U.S. official said.

Russian troops appear to be “risk averse,” the U.S. official said, and there is evidence that some Russian forces have surrendered and that troop morale is weak. The U.S. official said no evidence has emerged that Russia is considering retreating from its aim to capture Kyiv.

And Russia has managed to gain a swath of land in southern Ukraine, including capturing Kherson city, in addition to its push in the northeast and northwest.

Mr. Putin, who claims that Russians and Ukrainians are the same people, initially abstained from the kind of indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas that Russia used to subjugate its rebellious province of Chechnya in 1999-2000. The new barrages indicate that this relative restraint is falling away as Moscow seeks to crush Ukrainian resistance.

Heavy fighting continued throughout Ukraine on Tuesday, with Russian forces advancing in the country’s south and trying to push into Kyiv.

Photo Credit: Getty

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