A large swath of Makariv, a village 30 miles west of Kyiv, has sustained significant damage from apparent Russian airstrikes.
CNN geolocated and verified the authenticity of photos, posted to social media Saturday, which show major damage to apartment complexes, schools and a medical facility. One of the more stark images from Makariv shows a large hole in the northern wall of an apartment building from a military strike. Many of the buildings in the photos have sustained damage on their northern facades, evidence that points to military strikes that hit them as being Russian.
In Chernihiv, some 100 kilometers north of Kyiv, local landmark Hotel Ukraine was hit overnight. “I am here now. There is no hotel anymore,” Vyacheslav Chaus, head of Chernihiv region administration, said Saturday.
The northern city, which is close to the Belarus border, has been surrounded by Russian forces for more than a week and video from the city showed the collapsed floors of the hotel as well as widespread damage from missiles and airstrikes.
Chaus said civilians were dying from the strikes, which brought down the city’s electricity network. “Many people are being injured. The enemy shells civilian infrastructure, where there is no military,” he said, saying the city has “no electricity, almost no water, gas, and heat.”
The Russian Ministry of Defense has repeatedly claimed that Russian forces are not targeting civilians.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Saturday address the whole country was now a front line. “A few small towns just don’t exist anymore. And this is a tragedy. They are just gone. And people are also gone.”
Zelensky said negotiations to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “must begin with a ceasefire,” adding that Ukraine has lost about 1,300 troops as of Saturday. CNN has been unable to independently verify these numbers.
“We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine,” Biden said after reiterating the United States’ full support to its NATO allies and promising that the US will defend “every inch” of NATO territory.
“I want to be clear though, we are going to make sure that Ukraine has the weapons to defend themselves from an invading Russian force. And we will send money and food aid to save Ukrainians’ lives,” he added.
But Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned the US about the potential consequences of transferring weapons to Ukraine, saying convoys with foreign weapons would be “legitimate targets.”
“We warned the United States that pumping Ukraine with weapons from a number of countries orchestrated by them is not just a dangerous move, but these are actions that turn the corresponding convoys into legitimate targets,” Ryabkov said Saturday on the Russian state-run Channel One, according to state-owned RIA Novosti news agency.
Stiff resistance
In Ukraine, Russia has faced defiance from the public in the past two weeks. On Saturday, several hundred people swarmed the city hall in the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol following the detention of its mayor, Ivan Fedorov, by armed men the day before.
Shortly after Fedorov’s detention, the Russian-backed Luhansk regional prosecutor claimed Fedorov had committed terrorism offenses, allegations that Zelensky called a “crime against democracy” on Saturday.
The Zaporozhye regional administration said Saturday a new mayor had been installed. Galina Danilchenko, a former member of the Melitopol city council, was introduced as the acting mayor on local TV, according to a statement from the regional administration posted on Telegram. In her televised statement, Danilchenko said that her “main task is to take all necessary steps to get the city back to normal.”
She claimed there were people…
Read More: Russia intensifies strikes around Ukrainian capital as it warns US against arming Kyiv