On the seventeenth day of the war in Ukraine, Russian military pressure is growing on Kiev but it also appears that President Vladimir Putin has created an unstable political environment for himself, which could prove to be a fatal miscalculation.
According to CNN, explosions were heard overnight from Friday to Saturday from the capital. Fighting is raging northwest of Kyiv as the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol are encircled by Russian troops.
The Russian invasion – the biggest assault on a European state since World War II – has upended Europe’s security order and spurred EU capitals into rethinking what the bloc should stand for, and its economic, defense, and energy policies.
The EU was swift in imposing sweeping sanctions and offering political and humanitarian support to Ukraine, as well as some arms supplies, in the days after Russia attacked on February 24.
In Vassylkiv, south of the capital, an oil terminal was on fire after a Russian airstrike, according to the head of the regional military administration. The city’s airport was “completely destroyed ,” said mayor Natalia Balassinovitch.
The Russian army operates on several fronts, as it continues to stumble on the cities of Karkhiv, in the East, and of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, but reports advances on the front of the separatist region of Donbass (in eastern Ukraine).
According to the Pentagon, almost all of the soldiers deployed by the Kremlin on the borders of Ukraine have entered this country.
In the port city of Mykolaiv, the bombings almost did not stop last night, affecting, in particular, a care center for cancer patients and an eye hospital, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalist.
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukrainian forces of “gross violations” of humanitarian law during a discussion with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Macron denounced those accusations as “lies” and the President of the French Republic called on Russia for “an immediate ceasefire” and to “lift the siege” of Mariupol, where the situation is “humanly unsustainable”.
The Ukrainian envoy to United Nations dismisses Moscow’s accusation that Kyiv is operating US-backed biological weapons laboratories as “insane delirium.”
European Council President Charles Michel said, in a show of sympathy and moral support: “Ukraine belongs to the European family,” but others made clear Ukraine would not be allowed to join quickly, something Ukraine has sought and which has some support among former Eastern Bloc countries.
Joining the EU is a process that usually takes years and requires meeting strict criteria from economic stability to rooting out corruption to respecting liberal human rights.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “about 1,300” of his soldiers have died since the start of the Russian invasion.
This is the first time since the beginning of the conflict that the Ukrainian authorities have provided an assessment.
On March 2, the Russian army announced the loss of around 500 of its soldiers—a report which it has not updated since—even though Ukrainian sources claim to have killed 12,500 Russian troops, among them at least 11 top-ranking commanders.
At a summit in Versailles, European leaders closed the door on Ukraine’s hope of quickly gaining European Union membership but they sought to reassure it that Europe will urgently address the fallout of Moscow’s assault on its neighbor.
The Versailles summit brought together European heads of state and government, whose most concrete gesture was to double the envelope intended to finance the delivery of weapons to Ukraine in order to help it resist the attacks of the Russian army.
That will bring financial support for Ukrainian forces to 1 billion euros, an amount equal to $1,091,100,000.
There are those “who think that … Ukrainians are fighting for their lives and (deserve) a strong political message … and those who are still debating the procedures,” said Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa.
“There is no fast-track process,” said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a prominent opponent of EU enlargement.
Russia’s invasion, which Moscow calls a special military operation, has shattered Europe’s post-war security order that emerged from the ashes of World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
More than two million people have fled the country, thousands of civilians have been killed, and Putin’s troops laid siege to several Ukrainian cities.
“It is a war crime,” said Roberta Metsola, a Maltese politician serving as president of the European Parliament.
Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins, whose country shares a border with Russia, said cutting off Russian oil and gas would be the most effective way to get Putin to the negotiating table.
“We should go much further and much faster,” Karins said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz did not comment on whether the bloc should ban Russian oil imports, which Berlin has ruled out so far. Russia supplies about a third of Germany’s gas and crude requirements.
But the EU should stop using Russian fossil fuels by 2027, said European Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen, who is expected to propose a road map for that in May.