The second day of the Russian military campaign against Ukraine began with an intensified siege of the country’s capital, Kiev. Vladimir Putin’s forces have again bombed the city, this time with clearer effects on civilians, and are approaching from two flanks. Russian soldiers already operate in the city.
Under military pressure, the Kremlin has already opened the door to a peace negotiation on its terms. According to spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Putin agrees to send a delegation to Minsk (Belarus) to discuss “Ukraine’s neutrality” with a mission from President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Peskov was commenting on an earlier speech by the Ukrainian, who had said he was open to conversations and said he was “not afraid to discuss neutrality” — certainly not in this way. The Russians, in short, want their neighbor renouncing to Western structures, NATO (military alliance) and the European Union.
The choreography followed with a Chinese statement, according to which Putin said in conversation with leader Xi Jinping that he was ready to negotiate.
The military move confirms the hypothesis that Russia did indeed target Kiev as its main target in this war, even though there is fighting and attacks taking place in almost all parts of the country.
Residents of the capital awoke to the sounds of ballistic missile explosions, probably Iskander models launched from Belarus, and cruise missiles fired from planes. A Ukrainian Su-27 fighter, a Soviet model used by Moscow and Kiev, was shot down over the city and crashed into a residential block, leaving an uncertain number of casualties.
The image went around the internet, with the plane on fire lighting up the early morning sky. Ukraine says 137 dead on its side and maybe 800 Russian casualties, which is not measurable. Both sides report having destroyed enemy equipment.
Meanwhile, the battle over Antonov Airport in Hostomel (25 km northwest of central Kiev) continued into the night after Russian airborne forces took it the day before. Information is confusing, as it always is in wars.
The Ukrainians said they had retaken the runway, while in Moscow military analysts say the 76th Airborne Division from Pskov is ready to be flown in Il-76 transport planes to establish a beachhead at the airfield.
In any case, Russian special forces have already emerged from there, infiltrating the outskirts of the capital, as President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement, who significantly said he was abandoned by the West in the crisis and appealed to the pro-peace protesters in Russia, who are being repressed by the police.
At around 10 am (5 am GMT), the Defense Ministry said it had recorded the infiltration of Russians in the Obolon neighborhood and asked residents to notify the police and toss Molotov cocktails if they see any suspects. In some neighborhoods, the distribution of rifles and ammunition to civilians was reported.
Around 12:00 (7:00 am in Brazil), residents reported hearing small arms fire in the central region of the city. A plume of smoke rose from the government intelligence center, although the building appears intact from the outside. At 15:00 Moscow time (9:00 GMT), the Russian Defense Ministry said that “the western side of Kiev is blocked”.
The other front of attack forms east of the capital. The Russians took over the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, infamous for the 1986 disaster, thus establishing a corridor between their forces stationed in neighboring Belarus and the capital.
According to information from Washington, the Russians reached 32 km from the capital by this route. Western diplomats in Moscow told the report in less than 8 km. The Ukrainians say they stopped the advance at 50 km, having in this version established a line of defense against tanks using American Javelin missiles.
As a result, they become a likely target for more bombing, as the destruction of 11 airports and 14 air defense batteries on Thursday (24) appears to have given Moscow a decisive advantage in the country’s skies. This morning, Moscow said it had destroyed 118 military targets and shot down five fighter jets.
Meanwhile, terror has resumed for civilians, and the government has enacted measures to try to protect civilians, establishing night curfews, directing food storage, document collection and the use of air-raid shelters.
“It all started again around 4 am (11 pm in BrasÃlia). My mother remembered 1941”, said engineer Piotr Timotchenko, who lives on the outskirts of the capital, by cell phone. She wasn’t the only one. “The last time the capital experienced anything like this was in 1941 when it was attacked by Nazi Germany,” Chancellor Dmitro Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
As Timochenko says, “every Ukrainian and every Russian remembers the phrase: ‘4 am. Kiev is bombed’.” That was the radio message announcing the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, on July 22 of that year.
Memories of World War II hover over the conflict. Putin, in his speech announcing what would be an operation to “protect Donbass”, said he needed to “denazify” and disarm Ukraine. The association between Ukrainian military elements and neo-Nazi inspiration is known, and exploited by the Russian in his propaganda, even though Zelensky is Jewish.
Donbass is the name given to eastern Ukraine, where there are two pro-Russian rebel areas that were recognized as countries by Putin, after eight years of Kremlin-backed civil war, which began after the Russian-promoted annexation of Crimea to prevent the then new Kiev government join the West.
That question was at the heart of Putin’s December 17 ultimatum to the West, amid his four months of preparation for the action – which he always denied, until justifying it with a Ukrainian military threat to the 4 million residents of Donbass, 800,000 with a Russian passport, considered non-existent by analysts.
As the campaign progresses, the initial Russian objective seems clearer. It remains to be seen whether Putin intends to destructively attack the capital, proving Zelensky’s claim that he is “Target Number 1”, or whether he will keep up the pressure.
According to sheet heard from a person with access to the Kremlin on Friday, there is a palatial rumor that Putin delivered an ultimatum to Zelensky in a communication brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke to both of them last night. In this version, Putin reportedly told him to surrender or face a direct attack.
As would be predictable, it is impossible to prove this at this point, although there is logic in the account – even more so with Peskov’s speech. But illogical things have already presented themselves so far: this same person said last week that Putin would never risk killing Ukrainian civilians, given the interconnection and common origin of the two countries.
And while their forces are in fact favoring military action, after the start of a war, more precise attacks often give way to dirtier combat, in which the euphemism collateral damage — the corpses of non-combatants — arises. Zelensky has already used this in his speech, emphasizing civilian casualties.
In any case, in diplomatic circles in Moscow, there is a consensus that what Putin wants now is a quick regime change, enforcing his 2022 version of the Nazi “blitzkrieg”. In this scenario, Zelensky would cede power in exchange for some kind of amnesty or exile, and some politician from parties more aligned with Russia in the Rada (Parliament) would assume an interim government.
The alternative would be, for the Russians, to be killed or arrested, either in air strikes or in special forces infiltrated through Hostomel. In Kiev, there are signs of fatigue. “Ukraine will always make room for negotiations, including now. The war must stop,” presidential adviser Mikhailo Podoliak said on social media.
Before Peskov’s speech, Moscow signaled its willingness. “When Ukrainians are free from oppression, they will be able to choose their future. We do not see the possibility of recognizing as democratic a government that persecutes and uses methods of genocide against its people,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview.
While such hypotheses are taking shape, action continues in the rest of Ukraine. There are reports of massive bombings on the Black Sea coast, in Odessa to Mariupol, and in Karkhiv, in the north-east of the country. These moves seem to confirm the hypothesis that Putin will, in addition to seeking to overthrow Zelensky, dismember part of the country.
Thus, the self-proclaimed Russian republics of Donbass could end up linked to Crimea, establishing a physical bridge between Russia and its Black Sea Fleet based in Sevastopol, the main city on the annexed peninsula. The political status of such a territory, even as it is a military excision from a foreign area, is not known.
There are fighting in the region. The unconfirmed report that a school was bombed by Ukrainians in Donetsk, the capital of one of the areas, has taken Russian TV by storm. Two teachers would have died. In the Kherson region, Kiev forces managed to prevent the Russians from crossing a bridge over the central Dnieper River to link the east and west of the country.
There is the issue of cost. Putin spent about $5 billion to fix Crimea’s infrastructure, and the estimated five times that amount to do the same with the Donbass alone was always seen as an incentive to leave the region as an independent area – which he formalized on Monday ( 21). He did the same with two Russian autonomous areas in Georgia, in a short war in 2008 with the same anti-Western objective as the current one.
Meanwhile, the West does what it can: sanctions. After the announcement by American Joe Biden the night before, this morning the European Union closed its package of sanctions against Moscow, now including measures to prevent the sale of equipment for the oil refining and aircraft maintenance sector.
According to the bloc’s chief executive, German Ursula von der Leyen, posted on Twitter, this will harm the Russian oil industry — something to be seen, given that 1/3 of the oil consumed in Europe comes from Putin’s country. No word on natural gas, whose Russian share of the mainland market is 40%, with huge projects involving Germany.
In the case of planes, the reputation as a dangerous place to fly could get worse for Russia. Its flagship company, Aeroflot, has 120 of its 187 European Airbus model aircraft. Thus, maintenance and parts, if sanctions are maintained, will have to be sought in secondary markets.
