(CN) — Russia's assault of Ukraine ramped up on Friday with missiles fired into the western part of the country and it moved troops and tanks against Kyiv, the capital, as fighting was reported on the outskirts of a city where Ukrainians have dug in for a hard and bloody battle.
Russian missiles struck airfields in the western cities of Ivano-Frankivsk and Lutsk, killing at least two serviceman and wounding six. A Russian missile also hit a shoe factory in the city of Dnipro, marking the first attack on a city that lies on the Dnieper River and is located between Kyiv and parts of the country under control of Russian troops. The attack in Dnipro killed at least one person.
Sending missiles into western Ukraine, which has been until now mostly safe from the war and where millions of Ukrainians have fled to, was clearly an escalation but it likely was meant to hurt efforts by NATO to deliver arms to Ukraine rather than any indication Russia intends to push into that part of the country, where anti-Russian sentiment is very strong.
“The strikes were far to the west from the main Russian offensive and close to the borders with Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia – a possible signal to NATO about Moscow’s growing impatience with the supply of weapons to Ukraine,” said Andrius Tursa, an expert on Central and Eastern Europe at Teneo, a London-based political risk firm, in a briefing note.
In recent days, the U.S. and Poland discussed transferring numerous Soviet-era fighter jets used by the Polish air force to Ukraine, but the U.S. backed away from that idea for fear of Russia’s reaction. Ukraine is crying out for NATO to enter the fray by defending Ukrainian air space from Russian attacks, but so far U.S. President Joe Biden has resisted growing demands in Congress and even in Europe to take such a risky move and put NATO into direct conflict with Russia.
Although pro-Russian sources indicated that Russia was making advances on Friday, Ukraine's military said it was holding off the attackers and even taking back some towns. An assessment late Thursday by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War found Russian advances stalling, but Russia was on the offensive Friday.
In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told his compatriots that victory was within their grasp.
“We have been fighting against the army that was considered one of the strongest in the world, the army that was hoping that the Ukrainians would surrender,” Zelenskyy said. “It is impossible to say how long it will take to liberate our Ukrainian land. However, it is possible to say – we will do it. Because we want it, because we have already reached a strategic turning point. We are moving towards our goal, towards our victory.”
In Ukraine, so far 564 civilians, including 41 children, have been killed in the fighting and 982 wounded, according to the United Nations human rights office. But it said the death toll is likely much higher because it has not been able to confirm deaths in those places where the fighting has been most fierce.
It is unclear how many Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have been killed, though Russia acknowledged about 500 deaths nine days ago.
After 16 days of intense fighting, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the war in Ukraine may last for many more days and even weeks as the West pours weapons, such as anti-tank rocket launchers, into Ukraine and volunteers, many of them Western military veterans, stream in to join the fight. Ukraine is reportedly offering to pay anyone willing to fight $2,000 a day.
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