A Russian soldier said to his caring mother in a phone call that the Kremlin’s troops are killing civilians and children in Ukraine, to which the mother replied, “My son, don’t lose spirit.” The phone call was captured by the Ukrainian secret service and made public via the Twitter account of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian Parliament, and comes as Russia ramps up its offensive in the country’s contested eastern Donbas region. In the shared audio of the call, the mother also tells her soldier son, “You are doing great things,” to which he replies, “What are we doing? We are killing civilians and children.” The Russian mother, audibly indignant, replies, “You are killing Nazis, [expletive], believe me too. Stop it, don’t talk about it.”To the Kremlin’s probable dismay, the world is refusing to stop talking about the catalog of brutality that the Russian president is committed to expanding in Ukraine. Russia has now hurled its military might against Ukrainian cities and towns and poured more troops into the war, seeking to slice the country in two in a potentially pivotal battle for control of the eastern industrial heartland of coal mines and factories.The fighting is unfolding along a boomerang-shaped front hundreds of miles long in the Donbas. If successful, it would give Vladimir Putin a victory following the failed attempt by Moscow’s forces to storm the capital, Kyiv, and heavier-than-expected casualties.In Mariupol, the devastated port city in the Donbas, Ukrainian troops said the Russian military dropped heavy bombs to flatten what was left of a sprawling steel plant — believed to be the defenders’ last holdout — and hit a hospital where hundreds of people, including wounded troops and civilians with children, were sheltering in place.Russian bombardment of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is unabated. The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said this morning that at least 205 children have been killed and 373 wounded since the war began, and that 91 children have been killed in the Kharkiv oblast alone. Underscoring that nothing in that strategically situated city is out of bounds for the Russians, missile strikes on Saturday even destroyed the renowned chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen Hub in the city, in an attack that left four staffers wounded. According to the latest assessment from the British ministry of defense, Russia is carrying out attacks on cities across Ukraine to disrupt the movement of Ukrainian reinforcements and weaponry to the east. The Russians claim to have attacked more than a thousand targets last night alone. The “resilience of the highly motivated Ukrainian armed forces” is helping to repel attacks in the east, the British defense ministry also said. Those efforts are powered in part by weapons supplied through British and American largesse. President Biden is set to announce an additional $800 million military assistance package for Ukraine, bringing America’s total contribution to more than $3 billion. Howitzer artillery cannons are said to be part of Washington’s next delivery to Ukraine.In a video call with Mr. Biden and other world leaders Tuesday night, the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, emphasized a “critical need” for further military support for Ukraine. London’s Telegraph newspaper reported that Britain is preparing to send Stormer missile launchers, which would help Ukrainians defend against attacks by low-flying Russian aircraft, as well as Brimstone anti-ship missiles. “This will become an artillery conflict — they need support with more artillery, that is what we will be giving them in addition to many other forms of support,” Mr. Johnson said.Germany, on the other hand, refused on Tuesday night to join an international coalition in sending heavy weaponry to Ukraine, the Telegraph also reported. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said Berlin was ready to send money to Kyiv, but not armored personnel carriers or tanks. While Mr. Scholz said that “weapons with substantial impact” have already been delivered to Ukraine, he has come under fire from both coalition partners and domestic opposition for his wavering stance on Ukraine.Fellow NATO-member Norway, meanwhile, will be donating about 100 air defense systems to Ukraine, with the Scandinavian country’s defense minister saying that Ukraine “is depending on international support to resist Russian aggression.”
