Russia-Ukraine live updates: Kyiv wakes after night of street fighting, loud gunfire and explosions

The sound of gunfire and explosions continued through the early hours of Saturday in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

Video verified by The Washington Post shows at least three small fires and heavy smoke lining the center of Peremohy Avenue, a large two-way road with eight lanes. The video was filmed approximately 2,000 feet southeast of the Beresteiska metro station and, according to Google Maps, just 2½ miles from the Ukraine Ministry of Defense. A crowdsourced map and media reports indicate that a military unit is based roughly 800 feet from where the fires were seen.

At the start of the video, a voice said that “everything’s burning.” There is then an exchange from the street that couldn’t be deciphered.

Other video verified by The Post, filmed approximately 2½ miles southeast of the metro station, captured the sound of live rounds and bright lights from explosions coming from the direction of Peremohy Avenue.

On social media, there were additional reports of heavy gunfire and explosions in this area. Later, the Ukrainian military said they had destroyed combat vehicles in the vicinity. Blasts could be heard on several different YouTube livestreams of the city throughout the early morning.

In a video message overnight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told his citizens Russians would begin storming Kyiv that evening. “We all have to know what awaits us, and we have to withstand. The fate of Ukraine is being decided right now,” he said.

More video verified by The Post showed an explosion at a hospital in the southeastern city of Melitopol Friday.

David L. Stern in Mukachevo, Ukraine, contributed to this report.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council, said early Saturday on Facebook that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government remained in control of Kyiv after overnight skirmishes with Russian forces.

Fighting raged in the streets through the early hours of the morning and gunfire and explosions were heard in the capital. Hours before, Zelensky had warned residents to prepare for Kremlin troops to storm the capital.

As dawn broke, the president posted a video of himself apparently in the capital’s streets to show he remained in position.

President Biden has authorized a defense aid package to Ukraine worth up to $350 million, the White House announced late Friday, as Washington rushes to send more assistance to the pro-Western government that is being attacked by Russia.

The package includes “defense articles” as well as military education and training. The Biden administration intends to provide support as long as there is a viable Ukrainian government, The Washington Post previously reported.

Western leaders have said that U.S. and NATO troops would not be deployed to Ukraine, though they have ramped up shipments of materiel to Kyiv.

The United States had already provided some $650 million in defense aid to Ukraine in the past year. It has sent equipment including antitank Javelin missiles that were used to destroy Russian tanks this week, according to the Ukrainian government.

Earlier in the day, the White House asked Congress to approve $6.4 billion in new emergency aid to assist Ukraine, hoping to boost humanitarian assistance to the war-torn country and shore up other allies in the region against any further Russian aggression.

KYIV, Ukraine — From what was left of her fourth-floor balcony, an elderly woman tossed piece after piece of debris to the grass below. Out went heaps of glass, insulation and wood. She occasionally paused to survey the damage around her.

She is among the scores of Ukrainian civilians displaced from their homes in Kyiv on Friday after an unidentified projectile struck just outside their apartment block before dawn, severely damaging the building and wounding several residents, including at least one in critical condition. The apparent Russian strike left behind a large crater that now sits just a few yards from a playground, which remained empty Friday except for one young boy digging in the dirt.

Total numbers of civilian casualties in Ukraine remain unclear with no comprehensive figures released by Ukraine’s government. Early Friday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said at least 137 people — civilians and military personnel — had been killed in the Russian attacks.

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.

Ukrainian lawmaker and tech executive Kira Rudik repeated her intent to bear arms against Russian troops entering Kyiv during a television interview early Saturday local time, stressing that the country’s leaders should show citizens how to act in support of Ukrainian troops.

“If you would have asked me like three days ago about me bearing arms, I would tell you like definite no, and we would have argument,” she said in an appearance on MSNBC. “And now I have Kalashnikov.”

Her remarks came after she posted a short statement on Friday, showing an image of her holding an automatic rifle.

“I learn to use #Kalashnikov and prepare to bear arms. It sounds surreal as just a few days ago it would never come to mind,” she wrote on Twitter. “Our #women will protect our soil the same way as our #men. Go #Ukraine!” She had earlier said in a CNN interview that nearby explosions were rattling her windows in Kyiv.

Rudik was an executive at Ring, a smart-home tech company acquired by Amazon (whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post) in 2018, before she became a lawmaker in 2019, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Ukraine has been urging its civilians to resist Russian forces in various ways such as manufacturing molotov cocktails, which are generally glass bottles filled with flammable material that function like hand grenades. Around 18,000 weapons have been distributed in the Kyiv region, according to the Ukrainian government.