Ukraine missile hits Russian camp; new attacks near Kyiv, Chernihiv

The Ukrainian forces struck a target inside Russia, according to multiple publications, as Russian forces bombarded the outskirts of Kyiv and a besieged city in northern Ukraine on Wednesday, a day after promising to scale down operations there in what the West dismissed as a ploy to regroup by invaders taking heavy losses.

In an overnight address, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made clear he took nothing Moscow said at face value. “Ukrainians are not naive people,” he said. “Ukrainians have already learned during these 34 days of invasion, and over the past eight years of the war in Donbas, that the only thing they can trust is a concrete result.”

The Kremlin on Wednesday also played down hopes of a breakthrough following peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegates in Istanbul a day earlier.

“We cannot state that there was anything too promising or any breakthroughs,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “There is a lot of work to be done”.

In the missile attack 19 kilometres from  the Russia-Ukraine border, four Russian soldiers were injured, according to Russian news agency Tass. 

Ukraine and its Western allies on Wednesday dismissed a Russian military pullback from near Kyiv as a ploy to refit troops after heavy losses, even as invading forces bombard cities elsewhere and pressed on with the obliteration of besieged Mariupol.

“We all should be prepared to watch for a major offensive against other areas of Ukraine,” spokesman John Kirby said. “It does not mean that the threat to Kyiv is over.”

Ukrainian presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovych said Moscow was shifting some forces from northern Ukraine to the east, where it was trying to encircle the main Ukrainian force there. Some Russians would stay behind near Kyiv to tie Ukrainian forces down, he said.

Nearly five weeks into an invasion in which it has failed to capture any major cities, Russia said it would curtail operations near Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv “to increase mutual trust” for peace talks. But intensified bombardment could be heard in Kyiv on Wednesday morning. The capital itself was not hit, but windows rattled from the relentless artillery on its outskirts. 

Chernihiv’s Mayor Vladyslav Astroshenko said Russian bombardment of that city had intensified over the past 24 hours, with more than 100,000 people trapped inside with just enough food and medical supplies to last about another week.

Russian forces also struck a Red Cross facility in the besieged and destroyed southern Ukraine port city of Mariupol, Kyiv said.