On the 20th day of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, that country’s unflappable president, Volodymr Zelesnsky, said that the latest round of peace negotiations with the Kremlin were going “pretty good” even as the situation in the capital, Kiev, and elsewhere in the war-wracked country looked, by any estimation, pretty bad. 

In an address later Tuesday, Mr. Zelensky reiterated his call to close Ukrainian airspace after a night of air alarms heard “almost all over” the country, CNN reported. 

Although President Biden has yet to authorize a no-fly zone, he is expected to travel to Brussels next week for an “extraordinary” NATO summit on Russia’s war in Ukraine, Fox News reported. The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, reportedly said the president will “discuss the ongoing deterrence and defense efforts in response to Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine as well as to reaffirm our ironclad commitment to our NATO allies.”

The summit meeting, to be held on March 24, was convened by the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, as he noted in a Tuesday evening tweet.

After several consecutive days of heavy bombardment and artillery fire on mostly nonmilitary targets, much of the southern port city of Mariupol lay in ruins even though it remains under Ukrainian control. Kiev, which is “currently the symbol and forward operating base of Europe’s freedom and security,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said today, has so far avoided the destruction visited on some other Ukrainian cities, but on Tuesday there were signs of deterioration. 

The city is now under a curfew until 7 a.m. local time on Thursday and the only pre-approved movement is for people to “go to bomb shelters,” Mr. Klitschko said.

Earlier, lethal Russian attacks on numerous apartment tower blocks just outside the city appear to be what prompted the curfew order. Underscoring the danger raging at Kiev’s gates, a cameraman for Fox News, Pierre Zakrzewski, was killed after his vehicle was struck by incoming fire in Horenka outside Kiev on Monday.  

In an announcement today, Fox News Media’s CEO, Suzanne Scott, stated, “Pierre was a war zone photographer who covered nearly every international story for FOX News from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria during his long tenure with us.” She added: “His passion and talent as a journalist were unmatched.” 

Zakrzewski had been working in Ukraine since February. A Ukrainian journalist, Oleksandra Kuvshynova, also died in the attack. The Kyiv Independent reported that both Kuvshynova and Zakrzewski were “killed by Russian artillery.” A Fox News journalist, Benjamin Hall, was with Zakrzewski while newsgathering and remains hospitalized after suffering unspecified injuries in the attack. 

For those in the very urban eye of this tragically man-made hurricane —  Kiev — the message to hunker down now could not be much clearer. Earlier today the mayor’s brother, Wladimir Klitschko, told a Sky News reporter, “It doesn’t matter who you are on the Ukrainian soil now … if you have a press badge, or you’re a little girl or boy, an adult, man or woman … or an old person … you are a target from Russia, from the Russian army.” 

The younger Klitschko was speaking in front of a residential building in Kiev’s Svyatoshynskyi that had come under Russian attack and was still smoldering.

In Kiev and around the country, Ukrainains put up valiant resistance despite the hard fact that Russian firepower is vastly superior to that of Ukraine’s army. Kyiv Independent reported late on Tuesday that Ukraine’s military had repelled a new Russian assault on Kharkiv. The newspaper reported that according to the Kharkiv oblast governor, Oleh Synehubov, Russian troops suffered significant losses and retreated from their previous position.

Marioupol on the Black Sea had been a thriving commercial port city until the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Nearly 400,000 people are essentially trapped as Russian troops surround the city, despite reports of a deadly Ukrainian strike on some of those soldiers yesterday. 

A headline from the BBC today gives an indication of what is unfolding there now — “Ukraine war: Infection and hunger as hundreds hide in Mariupol cellar.” The report is about hundreds of residents now sheltering in place in the basement of a public building. It quotes a 39-year-old teacher, Anastasiya Ponomareva, who fled but remains in contact with some who didn’t, as saying: “Some have developed sepsis from shrapnel in the body. Things are very serious.”

The New York Times website reported that Russian forces continue to shell the besieged port city of Mykolaiv and that bodies are piled at the city’s morgue. That city lies between Russian-occupied Kherson and the major seaport city of Odessa, which is girding for an anticipated Russian onslaught.

A Times story headlined “Impunity for War Crimes in Syria Casts a Grim Shadow Over Ukraine” by that newspaper’s Ben Hubbard includes this quote from a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Emile Hokayem: “Creating a humanitarian catastrophe is part of the war strategy, not a secondary effect, because this is how you shift the burden on to the other side.” Another strategy, the report says, is “Russia’s engagement in international diplomacy aimed at ending the violence as a way of distracting the West from the war on the ground.”

The war on the ground may turn nastier yet. 

A report from France24 says Russia is “rallying militias ahead of Ukraine urban assaults.” The French news site says that if “Putin wants to capture major cities such as Kyiv and the Black Sea port of Odessa, he will have to bolster troops on the ground after an initial campaign phase that has been slower than the Kremlin expected.” 

It adds that Russia has already “drawn up lists of 40,000 fighters from Syrian army and allied militia ranks to be put on standby for deployment in Ukraine.”

It would appear that the NATO meeting cannot come soon enough.