Russian rockets hit Lviv damaging infrastructure, says local mayor

The mayor of Lviv has said another rocket had hit the city in western Ukraine on Saturday, not long after two rockets struck its outskirts in what appeared to be the first attacks within the city’s limits since the start of the war with Russia.

Lviv, some 60 kilometres from the Polish border, has so far escaped the bombardment and fighting that has devastated some Ukrainian cities closer to Russia since Moscow launched its invasion on February 24th.

But on Saturday, Governor Maksym Kozytskyy said two rockets had struck the city’s eastern outskirts in the mid-afternoon and ordered residents to take shelter.

Later, Mayor Andriy Sadoviy said there had been another strike. “One more rocket strike on Lviv,” he said in an online post.

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He did not share details of the location. He said the strike had damaged infrastructure but not residential buildings.

The first strikes set fire to an industrial facility storing fuel, but had not hit residential areas, Sadoviy said earlier.

Governor Kozytskyy said five people had been wounded in the that attack, citing preliminary figures. “Stay in shelters! Do not go out into the streets!” he warned.

Reuters news agency witnesses in central Lviv saw heavy black smoke rising from the northeast side of the city and a strong smell of burning filled the air.

Men huddled together on the street to watch a plume of smoke rising behind an apartment block.

Most residents appeared to stay indoors, peeking out from behind curtains as others hurried past on the road carrying their bags.

Lviv had a pre-war population of around 717,000, but for the thousands of families fleeing the worst of the fighting in eastern, southern and central Ukraine, it has become either a place of refuge within the country or a transit hub for people travelling out of the country.

Earlier, Russian forces took control of Ukraine’s Slavutych, where workers at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant live, the governor of Kyiv region said on Saturday.

In an online post, Governor Oleksandr Pavlyuk did not describe how the town had been taken, but said some residents had unfurled a large Ukrainian flag and shouted “Glory to Ukraine” in protest.

He also said the Russians fired into the air to disperse the pro-Ukraine protest in the centre of the town and had thrown stun grenades into the crowd.

There was no immediate comment from Russia about Slavutych.

Slavutych sits just outside a safety exclusion zone around Chernobyl - the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986 - where Ukrainian staff have continued to work even after the territory was occupied by Russian forces soon after the start of the February 24th invasion.

Presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said the town had become a new hotspot of the war. “The inhabitants are carrying out heroic civil resistance to the invader,” he said in a televised address, referring to Saturday’s protest.

On Friday, Ukraine said Russian troops had drawn close to the town, which had a pre-war population of around 25,000, and had launched an unsuccessful first attack.

Since then, “the Russian occupiers have invaded the town of Slavutych and seized the city hospital,” Governor Pavlyuk said.

In an online post, the city council asked residents, to remain calm. “The occupiers’ vehicles are moving around the city to check for weapons. Please do not provoke (them) or endanger yourselves.”

Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a “special military operation” to disarm its neighbour. Kyiv and its Western allies call it an unprovoked war of aggression.

Nuclear Weapons

The Kremlin again raised the spectre of the use of nuclear weapons in the war with Ukraine as Russian forces struggled to hold a key city in the south the country.

Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who is deputy chairman of the country’s security council, said Moscow could strike against an enemy that only used conventional weapons while Vladimir Putin’s defence minster claimed nuclear “readiness” was a priority.

The comments on Saturday prompted Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in an appearance by video link at Qatar’s Doha Forum to warn that Moscow was a direct threat to the world.

“Russia is deliberating bragging they can destroy with nuclear weapons, not only a certain country but the entire planet,” Zelenskiy said.

Putin established the nuclear threat at the start of the war, warning that western intervention would reap “consequences you have never seen”.

Western officials have said the threats may be simply an attempt to divert attention from the failure of Putin’s forces to secure a swift occupation of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and to make advances in other key areas of the country.

An adviser to Ukraine’s defence ministry, Markian Lubkivskyi, claimed on Saturday that Russia would soon lose control of the southern city of Kherson, the first major centre to fall to the Kremlin since the war began on February 24th.

He said: “I believe that today the city will be fully under the control of Ukrainian armed forces. We have finished in the last two days the operation in the Kyiv region so other armed forces are now focused on the southern part trying to get free Kherson and some other Ukrainian cities.”

Russia has approximately 6,000 nuclear warheads - the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. In an interview on Saturday, Medvedev said Russia’s nuclear doctrine did not require an enemy state to use such weapons first.

He said: “We have a special document on nuclear deterrence. This document clearly indicates the grounds on which the Russian Federation is entitled to use nuclear weapons. There are a few of them, let me remind them to you:

“Number one is the situation, when Russia is struck by a nuclear missile. The second case is any use of other nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies.

“The third is an attack on a critical infrastructure that will have paralysed our nuclear deterrent forces.

“And the fourth case is when an act of aggression is committed against Russia and its allies, which jeopardised the existence of the country itself, even without the use of nuclear weapons, that is, with the use of conventional weapons.”

Medvedev added that there was a “determination to defend the independence, sovereignty of our country, not to give anyone a reason to doubt even the slightest that we are ready to give a worthy response to any infringement on our country, on its independence”.

Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, who had not been seen for 12 days before a brief appearance on Friday and an address to his generals on Saturday, also spoke about the nuclear threat contained within Russia’s arsenal.

In a video, uploaded on social media by the Russian defence ministry, Shoigu said he had discussed issues related to the military budget and defence orders with the finance ministry.

He said: “We continue ahead-of-schedule delivery of weaponry and equipment by means of credits. The priorities are long-range, high-precision weapons, aircraft equipment and maintenance of engagement readiness of strategic nuclear forces.”

Scaling back

Vladimir Putin was facing the prospect of further setbacks in Ukraine as he appeared to be preparing Russians for a possible scaling back of his ambitions away from seizing Kyiv to fighting for control of the east.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed his troops as having delivered “powerful blows” to the invading forces as he urged Moscow to negotiate an end to the month-long war.

An adviser to the Ukrainian ministry of defence, Markian Lubkivskyi, predicted troops could on Saturday take back Kherson, the first major city that the Kremlin’s forces seized.

He was sceptical that the Russian president’s aims had truly changed away from trying to take the whole nation, but said it does appear “the enemy is focused on the eastern part of Ukraine”.

Moscow gave its first indication it could scale back its offensive when it said the “special military operation” would now focus on the “main goal, liberation of Donbas”, which borders Russia in the east of Ukraine.

Mr Zelensky’s forces were already believed to be regaining ground around the capital of Kyiv and the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) said Russians are “proving reluctant to engage in large scale urban infantry operations”.

Instead, the MoD said, they were preferring the “indiscriminate use of air and artillery bombardments in an attempt to demoralise defending forces”.

However, there were fresh signs it was Mr Putin’s troops who were struggling with morale, as Western intelligence suggested a Russian brigade commander, Colonel Medvechek, was deliberately run down and possibly killed by his own troops.

Mr Zelensky claimed in his night-time address that more than 16,000 Russian troops had been killed in the conflict as he called for Moscow to negotiate, but warned he would not give up sovereign territory.

In the UK, Policing minister Kit Malthouse was sceptical about Moscow’s statements hinting at a scaling back of its operations.

“I’m not qualified to say, but what I do know is there’s an awful lot of misinformation and disinformation flying around in this awful conflict,” he said.

“And we need to take care that what first appears may not in fact be the truth.

“Let’s hope there may well be a cessation of hostilities as soon as possible.”

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps signed new powers to seize two private jets worth tens of millions of pounds, one at Farnborough, the other at Biggin Hill, belonging to sanctioned Russian billionaire Eugene Shvidler.

“Putin’s friends who made millions out of his regime will not enjoy luxuries whilst innocent people die,” Mr Shapps said.

Facing unexpectedly fierce resistance, the Russian defence ministry said that having accomplished the “first phase” of military operations, its forces would concentrate on the Donbas region part-held by Moscow-backed separatist rebels.

Western officials said the Russian statement was a recognition its forces were overstretched and may have to “pause” operations around Kyiv and other cities while they focus on the east of the country.

“It is clear that Russia is recognising that it can’t pursue its operations on multiple axes simultaneously,” one official said.

“Therefore it is having to concentrate its force, particularly its logistics supply and its firepower, on a more limited number of approaches.”

In the besieged city of Mariupol, authorities said about 300 people died in a Russian air strike earlier this month on a theatre where hundreds of people were sheltering.

If confirmed, it is likely to lead to renewed calls for Western powers to step up military support for the Ukrainian forces.

Nato estimates that in four weeks of fighting, between 7,000 and 15,000 Russia troops have been killed in combat, compared to the 15,000 they lost in 10 years in Afghanistan.

Markian Lubkivskyi

An adviser to the Ukrainian defence minister remained sceptical over the Kremlin’s claims but said the invading forces do appear focused on the east of the nation now.

Markian Lubkivskyi told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We cannot believe the statements from Moscow because there’s still a lot of untruth and lies from that side.

“That’s why we understand the goal of (Vladimir) Putin still is the whole of Ukraine.

“And the last information we got from the ground, a lot of attacks from the air from Ukrainian cities. That’s why I can’t say the information coming from Moscow is correct, because we see a difference.

“We can see now that the enemy is focused on the eastern part of Ukraine but we are ready for any kind of attacks in different Ukrainian places.”

Mr Lubkivskyi also said that he believes Kyiv’s forces could on Saturday seize back Kherson, the first major city the invading forces took control of.

Markian Lubkivskyi told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I believe that today the city will be fully under the control of Ukrainian armed forces.

“We have finished in the last two days the operation in the Kyiv region so other armed forces are now focused on the southern part trying to get free Kherson and some other Ukrainian cities.”

Doha Forum

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on energy producing countries on Saturday to increase output so that Russia cannot use its oil and gas wealth to “blackmail” other nations.

Addressing the Doha Forum international conference via video link, Zelenskiy said countries such as Qatar could make a contribution to the stabilisation of Europe.

“They can do much to restore justice. The future of Europe depends on your effort. I ask you to increase the output of energy to ensure that everyone in Russia understands that no country can use energy as a weapon and blackmail the world,” he said in translated comments.

The month-long invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Europe’s top gas supplier, has sharpened concerns of disruption to energy supplies and increased scrutiny of European Union countries’ reliance on imported fossil fuels.

Zelenskiy also said no country is insured against shocks from disruptions to food supply happening because of Russia’s invasion of his country. Ukraine is one of the world’s largest grain producers.

“The world’s markets have not yet overcome from the repercussions of the pandemic, from the price shocks of food. No one is insured against these shocks and you cannot be insured if there is a physical scarcity of food,” he said.

“Russian troops are covering fields in Ukraine for miles, they are exploding agrarian equipment.”— Reuters with additional reporting by PA