Russia-Ukraine live updates: Blasts heard in Kyiv as Russian forces close in

KYIV — More than four dozen explosions thundered in the early morning in Kyiv Saturday, as Russian forces appeared to ramp up their push to take the Ukrainian capital.

Continuous shelling could be heard for about 30 minutes, around the same time the Ukrainian military repelled Russian attacks near a thermal plant in northern Kyiv, the Kyiv Independent reported.

The country’s intelligence service alerted people to seek safety after more than 50 shots were fired in the Shulyavka, a suburb near the city’s center.

“Urgently go to the shelter, this is not a joke, save your life and that of your loved ones,” the State Special Communications Service wrote.

The clashes, at about 3 a.m. in Kyiv, came hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky warned the city’s residents of an unprecedented battle over the capital. Air raid sirens sounded off in the city earlier in the night.

John Sung Kim, chief executive of the software outsourcing company JetBridge, has been communicating with his 24 employees in Kyiv, all software developers, through Slack. Half of them are trying to leave Ukraine, but Kim says he is struggling to help them and has been unable to get them train tickets, a rental car or gasoline.

“The other half of my team wants to stay and fight,” said Kim. “I got on an all-hands with them this morning and told them it’s not their responsibility to be soldiers and there’s other ways they can contribute since they’re software engineers, but there’s nothing I can say to dissuade them.”

Kim said JetBridge’s clients are almost exclusively Silicon Valley tech companies that are publicly traded or have raised venture capital financing. “The universal issue other than transportation logistics seems to be grandparents. ‘My babushka’ is the common theme of why they’re torn from actually leaving,” he said.

Kim, whose wife is Ukrainian, said he has friends that have successfully used traditional smuggling routes in forested areas to leave Ukraine, including one at the border with Poland. “I don’t want to say where this is because we may need to use this, but it is a five-kilometer walk from Ukraine over to Poland,” he said.

The fallout from Russia’s invasion has also impacted JetBridge’s employees in Belarus. “The males in Belarus are scared that there’s going to be military conscription, and unlike the Ukrainians, my Belarusian engineers have zero desire to pick up a rifle. Zero,” he said. In anticipation of European Union sanctions on Belarus, Kim said JetBridge has started paying employees in bitcoin.

A Ukrainian hospital in the southeastern city of Melitopol came under fire on Friday, according to a government official and video of an explosion at the facility, as the city faced heavy shelling and increased pressure from Russian forces.

In a footage of the event, first verified by Storyful, shelling is audible in the background before a large boom followed by a bright flash coming from inside the upper floors of the hospital building. More sounds of what appear to be explosions follow, before the camera zooms in to show sparks pinging off the structure with small puffs of smoke following them. It is unclear from the video what exactly hit the hospital or where it came from.

Ukrainian Health Minister Viktor Liashko, in a Facebook post, confirmed the hospital came under fire. He said that no one was hurt. Liashko mentioned several other medical facilities that he said came under Russian attack.

A day earlier, a Russian bomb struck a hospital in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, killing at least four civilians, according to Human Rights Watch, which said it interviewed hospital staff and analyzed photos of weapons remnants. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, tweeted early Friday morning that Russian forces have a “long history of attacking civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, markets and schools.”

KYIV, Ukraine — With Russian forces pressing into the northern suburbs of this besieged capital this week, Alexei Ianikovskyi took his family into the city’s center. They found sanctuary at a hotel where he worked, one with a basement for a bomb shelter.

By Friday, Ianikovskyi was faced with a difficult choice — one shared by countless Ukrainians: “I really want to join the army,” he said inside the bunker, as explosions rocked the outskirts of the city. “But I also need to protect my family.”

On the second day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv was on edge. A suspected rocket destroyed an apartment building in the city and its outer neighborhoods were either battlegrounds or no-go zones. Russian forces tried to push closer to the seat of the government, but Ukrainian forces repelled the advance. Still, by nightfall, the Russian bombardment, and the war itself, seemed to be intensifying.

Russian troops have moved into Ukraine from the north, south and east of the country. Russian forces entered Ukraine through a ground incursion from Belarus toward Kyiv. According to the Pentagon, Russia is facing more resistance in the capital than what it was expecting.

Read more on our visual timeline.

SHEHYNI, Ukraine — At the jammed-up border crossing to Poland, where people lined up for more than a day to make their way out of Ukraine to the safety of the European Union on Friday, some rushed in the opposite direction.

“It’s my home, it’s my land,” said Viktor, 22, who had boarded a plane from London two days earlier and made his way over land from the Czech Republic. “I’m going to fight to my last drop of blood.” He entered Ukraine at the land border crossing near the village of Shehyni with jerrycans of fuel — he’d heard there was a shortage.

As Russia launched its assault on Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky called on citizens to take up arms and fight, and promised firearms to anyone who is willing. Ukraine’s border guards were ordered Friday to stop all male citizens between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country.

The U.N. Security Council did not adopt a U.S.-backed resolution condemning the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine on Friday after Russia vetoed the measure, but Beijing’s decision to abstain was seen as an achievement for the United States.

Eleven countries voted in favor of the proposed measure, which would have required Russia to immediately withdraw forces from Ukraine. Three nations abstained: China, India and the United Arab Emirates.

Speaking after the vote, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield described Russia as reckless and irresponsible for launching this week’s military operation.

“Russia, you can veto this resolution, but you cannot veto our voices,” she said. “You cannot veto the Ukrainian people, you cannot veto the U.N. charter, and you will not veto accountability.”

The high-stakes session represented a test of the Biden administration’s ability to sway countries that have appeared to remain on the fence amid President Vladimir Putin’s operation, which U.S. officials say aims to replace Ukraine’s elected government.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia called the resolution “anti-Russian” and unbalanced, accusing the West of ignoring what he called “blood-chilling crimes” by the government in Kyiv.

The resolution would have also required Russia to reverse its official recognition of breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been battling government forces since 2014. It also called for facilitation of humanitarian aid.

Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the International Crisis Group, said China’s abstention would be a relief to the United States.

“The U.S. and its allies watered down the language of the resolution today precisely to keep China on board,” he said after the vote. “I wouldn’t mistake China’s abstention as a real blow to Russia though. Moscow knows that China is keeping its head down, and won’t take any serious action against it.”

The Emirati representative, Lana Nusseibeh, called the vote a “foregone conclusion.”

The Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was jolted by predawn explosions Friday as part of a full-scale Russian attack that Western officials say is aimed at toppling Ukraine’s government. By the end of the day local time, several Russian rockets fired from the sea had struck the coast of Ukraine around Odessa.

The Russian offensive has been geographically widespread, hitting Ukraine from the eastern city of Luhansk to just outside the western city of Lviv, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

This post will update.