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The convoy, stretching some 40 miles, has moved little over the past day as the Russian forces have grappled with fuel and food shortages, a U.S. defense official told reporters, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.
In its most recent battlefield update, the British Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces continue to hold the cities of Kharkiv, Kherson and Mariupol, but all three “are now likely encircled by Russian forces,” and air and artillery attacks on urban areas are intensifying.
The United Nations has recorded more than 130 civilian deaths since the beginning of the fighting last week, including 13 children, mostly because of shelling and rocket fire. The true human toll is likely far much higher, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights said.
Officials say Moscow has now pushed into Ukraine more than 80 percent of the combat power it staged within Russian border areas and in neighboring Belarus in recent months, demonstrating Putin’s determination to cripple a Western-backed government he claims has undermined Russian security. Ukraine has refused to forswear its right to join the NATO military alliance, a proposition Putin has described as a red line.
The conflict has upended global ties with Russia, triggering successive rounds of international sanctions, including measures targeting Russia’s central bank and cutting the country off from the global financial system. European nations have also come together in defiance of Putin’s actions, with some countries abandoning their long-standing policies of neutrality or conflict-avoidance to expand military support to Ukraine.
Perhaps most ominously, the invasion raised the specter of a military confrontation between NATO and Russia, a nation with a massive conventional force and nuclear arsenal. That possibility seem unthinkable as recently as last month.
The massive, albeit apparently stalled, military column appears to aim straight for the seat of Ukraine’s government. Fierce fighting and shelling has continued in different areas across the country, with Russia appearing to embrace the use of less accurate weapons, including multiple rocket launcher systems that can be used to launch thermobaric rockets, or vacuum bombs, U.S. officials said.
In Kyiv, volunteers and soldiers have dug trenches and assembled barricades, staging antiaircraft guns and antitank rockets in the streets ahead of what promises to be a punishing urban battle. Hundreds of thousand of Ukrainians have already fled, searching for safety in Poland and other neighboring countries, while many who remain in Kyiv have sought shelter in basements and subway stations.
The government of President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed that Ukrainians will not yield to Russian firepower, and he has called for additional Western aid. The flow of weaponry increased this week when Germany opened its stockpiles and even studiously neutral Finland agreed to chip in.
Russian and Ukrainian officials failed to make any progress in initial peace talks at the Belarusian border on Monday.
On Tuesday, Zelensky and his chief of staff reported that a Russian airstrike hit Babyn Yar, a vast Holocaust memorial in Kyiv, killing at least five people.
Western officials said that particularly fierce fighting continued Tuesday in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, a predominantly Russian-speaking city some 25 miles from the border. A missile struck a regional government building, triggering a massive explosion. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the city’s opera and ballet theater were also hit in Russian attacks, and residential neighborhoods had been shelled with what local officials suspected were cluster munitions.
Terekhov said the fighting had impeded the arrival of food and medical supplies, and artillery had struck transformer stations, leaving much of the city without power. Local authorities were hanging on, he said, but were surrounded by Russian forces. “This is very serious, and people are in a state of shock because they could have never thought this would happen," Terekhov said in a phone interview.
In southern Ukraine, Russia has occupied Berdyansk and taken possession of Melitopol, a city of about 150,000. Russian forces remain outside the major southern city of Mariupol, but are close enough to attack it with artillery and other long-range fires, the defense official said.
Russian and local forces are now battling over the southern city of Kherson, whose mayor, Ihor Kolykaev, warned residents in a Facebook post to stay indoors and pleaded with Russian authorities to spare their lives.
“We are NOT military! But I will keep the city and its life going as long as I can,” he wrote. “If the soldiers of the Russian Federation and their leadership hear me, I ask: leave our city, stop shelling the civilian population. You already took everything you wanted, including human lives. God be your judge.”
Western nations have been quick to point to early Russian stumbles in the invasion, highlighting what they say were failures to back up initial assaults and flawed assumptions about Ukrainian defenses. U.S. and Ukrainian officials have also noted what they say are signs that Russian soldiers, especially young conscripts, were given scant information about their mission before being sent into Ukraine to fight.
As of Tuesday morning, Russia had launched about 400 missiles at Ukraine since the invasion began, up from about 380 on Monday, the Pentagon said. Airspace over Ukraine continues to be contested, despite the massive size advantage that the Russian air force has, the Pentagon assesses.
Also on Tuesday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally, called for Russia to bring more S-400 air defense systems to his country, Interfax reported. Russian forces have poured into Ukraine from Belarus, which hosted joint military exercises with Russia in the weeks before Putin’s assault.
Last month, Belarus approved a referendum abandoning the country’s status as a nonnuclear state. Lukashenko has since raised the idea of moving Russian nuclear equipment into Belarus.
Ryan and Lamothe reported from Washington. Sudarsan Raghavan, Siobhán O’Grady, Whitney Shefte and Kostiantyn Khudov in Kyiv, David Stern in Mukachevo and Karla Adam in London contributed to this report.
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