Russia continues bombardment of Ukrainian cities despite peace talk claims
Russian forces continued to attack the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Chernihiv on Wednesday as a small number of Russian units withdrew — just hours after Moscow pledged to “increase mutual trust” by de-escalating its military presence around those same cities.
A round of Russian shelling hit a slew of civilian sites, including residential areas and at least one library, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday. The attacks came alongside renewed Russian aggression in the eastern Donbas region.
Russia claimed Tuesday that it would “radically” reduce its attacks around Kyiv and Chernihiv as a goodwill gesture amid the peace talks recently convened in Istanbul.
“Given that the talks on the preparation of an agreement on the neutrality and non-nuclear status of Ukraine have moved into a practical field … a decision has been made to radically, by several times, reduce the military activity in the areas of Kyiv and Chernihiv,” Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin had said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky replied Tuesday, “you can trust only concrete results.”
Those results amounted to the overnight targeting of civilian infrastructure, said Viacheslav Chaus, regional governor of the Chernihiv oblast.
“The so-called reduction of activity in the Chernihiv region was demonstrated by the enemy strikes, including airstrikes on Nizhyn, and all night long they were shelling Chernihiv,” Chaus said.
He said homes, shopping centers and libraries were hit in the attack.
Ukrainian officials said Russian forces also continued to shell the Bucha, Brovary and Vyshhorod regions around Kyiv, targeting civilian infrastructure.
The Pentagon said Wednesday that Russia had pulled fewer than 20% of its forces away from the two northern city centers, with the remainder continuing to hold defensive positions.
Defense spokesman John Kirby said a small number of units were headed north towards Belarus, where the American officials expect they will be refitted and resupplied before being deployed elsewhere in Ukraine.
“We have seen none of them repositioned to their home garrison,” Kirby said. “And that’s not a small point.”
“If the Russians were really serious about deescalating — the way they spun this yesterday, that they’re trying to take the pressure off — well then send them home,” Kirby said.
Meanwhile, Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk — a contested city in the eastern Donbas region — claimed a Ukrainian missile destroyed part of an apartment block, killing two.
The Kremlin has said it plans to focus future operations on the Donbas. The Pentagon said Wednesday that it believes 1,000 mercenaries with Russia’s ruthless Wagner Group have already been dedicated to the separatist region.
Fighting continued in the battered southern port of Mariupol as well, on Wednesday, with the Pentagon assessing that Russian troops were getting close to the city center.
As negotiations continued, Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said that Ukraine’s offer of formal neutrality and a pledge to not join NATO met a key Kremlin demand, moving peace talks forward.
Zelensky’s office clarified Wednesday that any peace offer would not be put to a vote of the Ukrainian people until all Russian forces withdrew to their pre-invasion positions.
With Post wires
