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Russian airstrikes continue to batter cities including Kyiv, leading Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dismiss Moscow’s promise as merely “words.” In his video address Wednesday evening, Zelensky said the war was nearing “a turning point,” as his country braces for fresh assaults in the eastern Donbas region.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are set to resume talks online Friday, head Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia said in an overnight Telegram post, adding that he hopes to see Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet if diplomatic efforts progress. The two sides emerged from their in-person meeting Tuesday with the vague outline of a possible peace deal, and a senior Ukrainian official said Russian representatives appeared to have “listened” to Kyiv’s proposal. But the Kremlin said the same day that an agreement is far from reach.
Here’s what to know
Why Russia’s military is bogged down by logistics in Ukraine
Return to menuAmbushed convoys and broken-down tanks. Generals killed close to the front. Long-expired rations. Frostbite.
Russia’s military was built for quick, overwhelming firepower, experts say, but its weakness is logistics. And on the roads of Ukraine a month after the first invasion, that weakness is showing.
Many analysts say the Russians assumed they would quickly capture the capital city of Kyiv and force President Volodymyr Zelensky out of power. Whatever the strategy, that outcome did not happen, and Russia has been bedeviled by an inability to keep supplies flowing to troops in a longer ground war.
After a surprisingly fierce Ukrainian resistance, “we can suspect that [Russians] did not properly organize the logistics necessary for an effective Plan B, which was to have an actual, serious fight in what is the largest country in Europe outside of Russia,” said Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, a Virginia-based think tank.
Voices from the siege of Mariupol
Return to menuZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — Even amid the barbarity of Russia’s month-long assault on Ukraine, nowhere has suffered such a cruel fate as Mariupol, the coastal port city that President Vladimir Putin appears set on capturing at any cost.
Once a thriving community on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol is now described by the local city council as “the ashes of a dead land." It reports 5,000 have been killed, although such figures are impossible to verify. After a brutal three-week siege, the battle moved into the city streets, where Ukrainian forces now fight house-to-house with Russian and separatist forces present in every neighborhood.
“It’s genocide,” Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said. “They are destroying everything that lives.”
With communications from the city blocked, those who escape bring with them stories of hunger, fear and survival. Some tremble with emotion as they arrive to safety in Zaporizhzhia, 140 miles to the northwest. Others are rushed straight to the hospital for wounds they sustained in the city, or on the treacherous roads out.
Mariupol was once home to 450,000 people, and 100,000 or so may still be trapped. There are few who fled who didn’t leave someone, and with reports of forced deportations to Russia, some are braving the road back to try to save them.
The Washington Post interviewed more than 50 people who escaped the horrors of the city.
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