A day that will see the Ukrainian president address the American Congress via video from Kiev began with Russian airstrikes on two high-rise buildings in that city’s Schevchenkivskyi district. 

Video verified by Sky News showed explosions and plumes of smoke. Ukraine’s emergency services confirmed in a Facebook post that “enemy shelling” caused the 12th floor of one of the buildings to collapse and fires to engulf four floors, with damage to a neighboring nine-story building. The fires were extinguished and 37 people evacuated while a search for any residents who may have been trapped was ongoing. 

Schevchenkivskyi is situated in central Kiev and is home to the Golden Gate of Kyiv, the main entrance to the medieval city. This morning’s attack on civilians underscores the hazards facing everyday Ukrainians even as things might be looking up on the diplomatic front. 

During a press conference in Kiev yesterday at which President Zelensky was present, the Polish deputy prime minister, Jarosław Kaczynski, said that an international peacekeeping mission should be sent to Ukraine: ”I think that it is necessary to have a peace mission — NATO, possibly some wider international structure — but a mission that will be able to defend itself, which will operate on Ukrainian territory.” 

The prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia had traveled together by train from Poland to the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday in a show of solidarity with the country and to meet with Mr. Zelensky. But as this newspaper has said on a previous occasion, sometimes Polish diplomacy could use some polish: Despite Mr. Kaczynsk’s evocation of NATO as a lifeline to Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky, for his part, has been unambiguous in recent days that Ukraine will not be seeking NATO membership, a commitment that has been a key demand of Vladimir Putin.

After delegations from Ukraine and Russia met again Tuesday via video, AP reported, Mr. Zelensky said early Wednesday that Russia’s demands were becoming “more realistic.” The two sides were expected to speak again Wednesday. 

Talk of compromise with Russia comes despite Moscow’s stepped up bombardment of Kiev, which has continued into Wednesday, and new assaults on the port city of Mariupol and elsewhere. Ahead of his address to Congress today, Mr. Zelensky thanked President Biden and “all the friends of Ukraine” for $13.6 billion in new support.

Ukraine’s military, despite being vastly outgunned by the totality of Russian forces even as the latter come under unanticipated strain in places, is defending the country capably in areas. 

Britain’s Ministry of Defense tweeted early this morning that it is likely Russia is “struggling to conduct offensive operations in the face of sustained Ukrainian resistance” and that it is using “irregular sources such as Private Military Companies, Syrian and other mercenaries” in addition to redeploying forces from its Eastern Military District, Pacific Fleet, and Armenia. As reported by Sky News, the British defense ministry assesses that continued losses will make it difficult for Russia to secure further territory in Ukraine. 

There are indications that some territory already captured by the Russians may be tougher for Mr. Putin’s troops to hold on to than Moscow might have initially thought. 

There was a suspected Ukrainian strike on the Russian-held Kherson International Airport and Air Base yesterday, AP reported this morning,  setting several helicopters and vehicles ablaze. Ukrainian authorities said the area had been rocked by powerful blasts throughout the day. 

Closer to Kiev, Ukrainian generals have told the BBC that the Russians’ advance has been halted by strategically planned explosions on bridges in the region, and that the terrain itself is impeding Russian advance: a general identified only as Knyazev said, “These are such marshy lowlands, and they can’t pass them. If there were no Ukrainian soldiers, they would simply throw a pontoon crossing over the river. But we are there, and we want to destroy them.”

If the generals responsible for defending the capital were fighting hard to keep Russian artillery out of range, the BBC also reported, they “accepted that the capital was vulnerable to missiles.” Furthermore, if Russia’s quest to conquer Ukraine inch by inch has stalled, Moscow is showing no signs of backing down. 

The situation at Mariupol is grim, with reports surfacing Wednesday that Russian forces had captured a hospital in the city. If confirmed, it would fit a pattern of Russia’s campaign of essentially terrorizing civilian populations in Ukraine wherever it can. 

To cite another example, Russian forces have targeted more than 400 schools and 59 of them have been destroyed, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktov. Although the number of children killed in the war so far cannot be confirmed, according to various reports there have been dozens of child casualties as a result of Russian crossfire or other incidents. 

Russian warships fired missiles and artillery around midnight at the Ukrainian sea coast near Tuzla, to the south of Odessa, according to a Ukrainian Interior Ministry advisor, Anton Gerashchenko, the AP reported. Whether those missiles hit any targets was not clear, though it is possible Russians were trying to get a read on the state of Ukraine’s coastal defenses. 

A former head of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Alex Younger, told the BBC’s Radio 4 this morning that China may need to step up to the diplomatic plate to try to end the war. He is the latest public figure to say only China can influence President Putin to stop the war on Ukraine: ”Of all the people in the world that can assert influence on Vladimir Putin, who is in his bunker and who is obsessed by achieving greatness through the restoration of the Russian Empire … of all the people that can talk sense to him, it’s Xi,” a reference to the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. 

Today, though, it is likely that the Kremlin’s attention, and that of the rest of an increasingly impatient world, will be fixed on Washington and Volodymyr Zelesnky when he addresses Congress.