Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has again called on Russia to negotiate an end to the war, but said Ukraine would not agree to hand over any of its territories for peace. “Ukraine’s territorial integrity must be guaranteed,” he said in a video overnight address to the nation. “That is, the conditions must be fair, because the Ukrainian people will not accept them otherwise.” As the Russians continue to pound the capital from the air, they appear to have entered a “defensive crouch” outside Kyiv and are focusing more on Donbass, a senior U.S. defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss his assessment. . . “They show no sign that they are willing to move to Kyiv from the ground,” the official said. Get the Times of Israel Daily E-mail and never miss our top stories By registering, you agree to the terms In comments that seemed to confirm a change in Moscow’s military targets, Colonel Sergei Rudskoi, Russia’s deputy chief of staff, said the main goal of the first phase of the operation – to reduce Ukraine’s combat capability – was ” , allowing Russian forces to focus on the “main goal, the liberation of Donbas.” Donbass is the predominantly Russian-speaking eastern part of the country where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 and where many residents want closer ties to Moscow. The Donetsk and Luhansk coal mining and industrial areas are recognized by Russia as independent. A member of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Unit prepares to go to the front line in Yasnohorodka, on the outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, March 25, 2022. (AP Photo / (AP Photo / Rodrigo Abd) The British Ministry of Defense said that Ukrainian forces had retaliated and were able to retake cities and defensive positions up to 35 kilometers (22 miles) east of Kiev, as Russian troops retreated to their overcrowded supply lines. In the south, logistical problems and the Ukrainian resistance are slowing down the Russians as they try to drive west to the port of Odessa, the ministry said. In fact, the Russians no longer have full control of Kherson, the first major city to fall to Moscow forces, a senior U.S. defense official has said. The official said the southern city was being challenged by Ukrainians in heavy fighting. The Kremlin has denied that it lost full control. The Russian military says 1,351 of its soldiers have been killed and 3,825 wounded in Ukraine, although it was not immediately clear if this included separatists in the east or others outside the Defense Ministry, such as the National Guard. Earlier this week, NATO estimated that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in four weeks of fighting. Rudskoi’s surprise statement came as a Western official said a seventh Russian general, Lieutenant General Yakov Rezanstev, had died in Ukraine and that a colonel had been “deliberately” killed by his own discouraged men. Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian authorities said about 300 people had been killed in a Russian airstrike last week at a Mariupol theater used as a shelter, making it the deadliest known civilian attack on civilians to date. The bloodshed in the theater sparked allegations that Moscow was committing war crimes by killing civilians, either intentionally or indiscriminately. This photo released by the Donetsk Regional Political-Military Administrative Council on March 16, 2022 shows the Drama Theater, destroyed after the bombing, in Mariupol, Ukraine. (Donetsk Regional Political-Military Administrative Council via AP) For days, the Mariupol government was unable to count the victims of the March 16 bombing of the Mariupol Grand Theater, which is said to have covered hundreds of people, the word “CHILDREN” in Russian in huge white letters. on the ground outside to repel the air attack. Announcing the death toll on its Telegram channel on Friday, the city government relied on eyewitnesses. But it was not immediately clear how the witnesses got to the number or whether emergency workers had completed the excavation. US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the bombing of the theater was an “absolute shock, especially given that it was so clearly a target of civilians.” He said it showed “a brazen contempt for the lives of innocent people” in the besieged port city. The Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner said shortly after the attack that more than 1,300 people had taken refuge in the theater, many of them because their homes had been destroyed. The building had an underground bomb shelter and some survivors came out of the rubble after the attack. “This is a barbaric war and according to international conventions, deliberate attacks on civilians are war crimes,” said Mircea Geoana, NATO’s deputy secretary general. He said Putin’s efforts to break Ukraine’s will to resist had the opposite effect: “What he sees as an answer is an even more determined Ukrainian army and an increasingly united West in support of Ukraine.” For the civilians, the suffering is becoming more and more intense in the cities and towns of Ukraine, which are becoming more and more like the ruins left behind by the Russian forces in their campaigns in Syria and Chechnya. The children are sitting in a refugee center in Nadarzyn, near Warsaw, Poland, on Friday, March 25, 2022. (AP Photo / Petr David Josek) In the village of Yasnohorodka, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Kiev, Russian troops stationed earlier in the week appeared to have been repulsed as part of a counterattack by Ukrainian forces. The tower of the village church was damaged by an explosion and the houses at the main crossroads were in ruins. “You can see for yourself what happened here. People were killed here. “Our soldiers were killed here,” said Yasnohorodka resident Valeriy Puzakov. As for Mariupol, “there is nothing left of Mariupol,” said Evgeni Sokirko, who was among those waiting for an evacuation train in Zaporizhia, a stopover for refugees from the devastated port city. “In the last week, there have been explosions like I have never heard before.” Oksana Abramova, 42, said she felt sorry for those left behind in the city who had been cut off from the bombing of mobile, radio and television towers and had no means of escape. “All the time I think about how they are, where they are. Are they still hiding, are they alive? “Or maybe he’s not there anymore,” he said. In Kyiv, the ashes of the dead are piled up in the central crematorium because so many relatives have left, leaving the containers unclaimed. And the northern city of Chernihiv is completely cut off after Russian forces destroyed bridges, leaving people without electricity, water and heating, authorities said. For the vulnerable – the elderly, children and others who can not join the millions heading west – food shortages are on the rise in a country that was once known as the bread basket for the world. People try to put out a fire in a market after a Russian attack in Kharkov, Ukraine, Friday, March 25, 2022. (AP Photo / Felipe Dana) In the relentlessly bombed Kharkiv, hundreds of panicked people took refuge in the metro and a hospital emergency room filled with wounded soldiers and civilians. Mostly elderly women lined up stoically to collect food and other urgent supplies this week as explosions erupted from afar. Upset by the anticipation, a young girl watched a volunteer’s knife cut a giant plate of cheese, carving thick slices, one for each hungry person. “Among those left are people who can walk on their own, but many who can not walk, the elderly,” said Hanna Spitsyna. “All these people need diapers, blankets and food.”
