Russian Strikes on Kyiv Put Ukraine on Alert as NATO Allies Add Troops and Pledge More Aid
Missile attacks on the capital and other cities far from the eastern front prompted Western allies to announce new troop deployments and billions in additional assistance as officials warned the war could last years.
By Amy Swan · · Originally reported by Los Angeles Times
Central and western Ukraine returned to a state of high alert on Friday, April 29, 2022, after Russian missiles struck the capital, Kyiv, killing at least one person. The attack ended a relative lull that had allowed United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to visit mass graves on the city's outskirts.
In an overnight video address, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strike, which came a day earlier near the city center after his meeting with Guterres, showed "Russia's true attitude to global institutions." He promised "a strong response" and said Ukraine must still drive out the occupiers. He also cited recent bombings in Fastiv, southwest of Kyiv, and in the Black Sea port of Odesa, where a missile this week hit a major bridge and railway link.
Moscow had signaled it would concentrate on the eastern Donbas region, yet it has kept hitting targets in the center and west. In response, the United States, Britain and other NATO members are adding troops around Ukraine and pledging billions more in humanitarian and military aid through the summer. President Biden said he would ask Congress to approve $33 billion in new assistance. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance must prepare for the long term, adding that the war could "drag on and last for months and years."
Britain said it would send 8,000 troops to Eastern Europe over the summer for extended exercises meant to deter Russian aggression, one of its largest deployments since the Cold War. The training will involve thousands of troops from NATO and the Joint Expeditionary Force, which includes Finland and Sweden. Those two non-NATO countries were told this week that their membership would be fast-tracked if they applied. Britain also announced it would send war crimes investigators to Ukraine following reports of rape by Russian troops and the discovery of mass graves near Kyiv and additional burials near Mariupol. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said justice would be done.
Separately, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said Russian President Vladimir Putin had accepted an invitation to the Group of 20 summit planned for the fall in Bali. Indonesia currently chairs the G-20. In Washington, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby became emotional discussing the targeting of Ukrainian civilians and said that while he could not speak to Putin's psychology, "we can all speak to his depravity."
In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a body was pulled from the rubble after missiles hit a commercial and residential neighborhood. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said its employee Vira Hyrych was killed. Relatives of Willy Joseph Cancel, a 22-year-old former U.S. Marine, said he died Monday fighting alongside Ukrainian forces while working for a military contractor, in what the Associated Press described as the first known death of an American citizen fighting in Ukraine. His mother, Rebecca Cabrera, said he believed in Ukraine's cause. He had a 7-month-old son, and his body has not been recovered.
In Mariupol, authorities announced another evacuation attempt for about 600 military personnel and civilians surrounded inside the Azovstal steel plant, the city's last holdout. Earlier efforts have not materialized. Mayor Vadym Boychenko said that "if Mariupol is hell, Azovstal is worse," but insisted the city had not fallen. Fighting also continued along a 300-mile front in Donetsk and Luhansk, and officials in Sumy reported repeated shelling with no casualties. Russian authorities reported shelling in Kursk and Bryansk and blamed Ukraine, which did not claim responsibility.
Away from the front, daily life largely continued. Air-raid sirens sounded regularly in Dnipro, where fighter jets flew over farmland as workers planted crops, and overnight in Lviv, where traffic filled the streets by morning. Lviv Gov. Maksym Kozytsky said the area now hosts 335,000 displaced Ukrainians. More than 8 million people are displaced inside Ukraine and over 5 million have fled abroad. In Odesa, residents said their sense of safety had weakened after the Zatoka bridge was severed, and a full-day curfew was scheduled for Monday, the anniversary of 2014 clashes between pro-Ukraine and pro-Russia activists.
