Ukrainian Cities Battered as Leaders Head to Brussels

President Biden and western leaders will try to steer the continent’s worst crisis since World War II but ‘this war will not end easily or rapidly,’ Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, told reporters ahead of the trip

The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, arrives at Melsbroek military airport in Brussels\ March 23, 2022. He will attend an extraordinary NATO summit. AP/Geert Vanden Wijngaert

Amid fresh reports of heavy fighting in Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, and ongoing bombardment of Mariupol, President Biden will embark Wednesday on a four-day trip to Europe that will see him huddle with key allies in Brussels and Warsaw in a bid to prevent Russia’s war on Ukraine from spiraling into an even greater catastrophe. 

The leaders will try to steer the continent’s worst crisis since World War II but “this war will not end easily or rapidly,” Mr. Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, told reporters ahead of the trip. Mr. Sullivan said the president would coordinate with allies on military assistance for Ukraine and new sanctions on Russia, and added that Mr. Biden is working on long-term efforts to boost defenses in Eastern Europe, where more countries fear the wrath of Vladimir Putin.

With much media attention focused on fighting near Kiev and in Mariupol in recent days, the fate of Kharkiv has been somewhat obscured. Yet the city, only about 30 miles from the Russian border, has been reeling under a near-constant barrage of Russian artillery fire for weeks and much of the historic center lies in ruins. On Wednesday morning the Ukrainian military said it had repulsed an attack by Russian troops, but details were sketchy. Al Jazeera reported that local authorities said five people — including a 9-year-old boy — were killed in a Russian artillery attack on Sunday. 

“The Destruction of Kharkiv” is the title of a jarring article in the New Yorker magazine penned by noted Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen and accompanied by images from Magnum photographer Jérôme Sessini, about how Russian attacks have terrorized the civilian population in that city. Ms. Gessen begins by referring to the city in the past tense: “Kharkiv was eclectic and sure of itself in the way that only a large cosmopolitan city can be.” 

She writes that she visited Kharkiv less than a month before Russian missiles started striking it: “Most of the people I met there—and all of the men whom I met there—told me that they, and the city, were ready for war. They thought they knew what war was.”

A new phase of the war has opened against Mariupol, with the Times of London reporting Wednesday morning that Russian warships have started to shell the city from the Sea of Azov. An estimated 100,000 people face disease, starvation, and bombardment amid the ruins of the besieged Ukrainian port.

The destruction of vast swaths of Kharkiv and Mariupol is not lost on the residents of Kiev, where upticks in Russian attacks have been recorded in recent days. On Wednesday the Shevchenkivsky district of Kiev came under Russian fire, according to news agency Ukrinform. Russian troops damaged a shopping center, houses, and a high-rise building in the bombardment, injuring four people and starting multiple fires that were extinguished. 

Russian forces also bombed and destroyed a bridge in the encircled city of Chernihiv, the AP reported Wednesday morning. The destroyed bridge, which had been used for evacuating civilians and delivering humanitarian aid, crossed the Desna River and connected Chernihiv to Kiev.

Kyiv Independent reported that Russian forces have stolen buses that were being driven to rescue people from Mariupol. The Russians are said to have commandeered a convoy of 11 empty buses and driven them, along with the drivers and several emergency services workers, to an undisclosed location.

On a somewhat more encouraging note, the Ukrainian Air Force has been holding its own against Russians in fierce sky battles over the country — even though Russia is estimated to be operating about 200 flights a day while Ukraine’s number is 5-10, the New York Times reports. If the Russian air force has yet to gain control over Ukrainian airspace, determined young pilots like one interviewed for the Times article may be the reason why. 

Noting that “Top Gun”-type air battles, while rare in modern warfare, are now raging in the Ukrainian skies, the article says: “The success of the Ukrainian pilots in the air have protected troops on the ground and prevented bombings in cities, as the pilots managed on many occasions to intercept Russian cruise missiles. Ukrainian officials also claim that their forces have shot down 97 Russian aircraft. This number can not be verified, however the wreckage of Russian fighter jets is found in rivers, fields and houses.” 

Ukrainian planes take off from western Ukraine — at airports that have been bombed but have runways long enough for takeoffs or landings, or even from highways, according to analysts.

 Battles rage on the cultural front, too. The Guardian reports on “Dumping vodka, banning Dostoevsky: some anti-Russian protests are empty gestures,” saying that “from cracking down on cultural figures to renaming food, disgust with Putin risks shifting into xenophobia.” The newspaper says the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has requested Americans stop buying from companies that have continued to do business with Russia, and notes that earlier this month a group of “small-town officials” in New York gathered news crews to watch them dump bottles of vodka onto the sidewalk. 

In recent days even this reporter has found himself on the frontlines of this improbable fray when a newly purchased washing machine turned out to be of Russian manufacture. A determination was made to retain the device — but to keep an eye on the spin cycle.


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