Russia captures town near Chernobyl, rockets hit Lviv

Rockets struck the outskirts of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv yesterday for what appeared to be the first time since Russia’s invasion, and Russian forces took control of a town where workers at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant live.
Intense fighting raged in several parts of Ukraine, suggesting there will be no swift let-up in the month-old war.
Two rockets hit the outskirts of Lviv, some 60km from the Polish border, a city that so far have escaped the heavy bombardment and fighting that has devastated some Ukrainian cities closer to Russia.
Regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyy said five people had been wounded and residents were told to head to shelters after three powerful blasts in mid-afternoon. Reuters witnesses saw black smoke rising from the northeast side of the city and Lviv’s mayor said an oil storage facility had been hit.
Russian troops seized Slavutych, a town where workers at the nearby Chernobyl plant live, the regional governor said.
He said Russian forces had fired into the air and thrown stun grenades to disperse residents who unfurled a large Ukrainian flag and shouted “Glory to Ukraine” in protest. Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
Slavutych sits just outside the so-called exclusion zone around Chernobyl, which was the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986.
In the encircled southern city of Mariupol, Mayor Vadym Boichenko said the situation remained critical, with street fighting in the centre. Mariupol has been devastated by weeks of Russian fire.
In an address to Qatar’s Doha Forum, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky compared the devastation in Mariupol to the destruction inflicted on the Syrian city of Aleppo by combined Syrian and Russian forces in Syria’s civil war.
“They are destroying our ports,” Zelensky said, warning of dire consequence if his country — one of the world’s major grains producers — could not export its foodstuffs. “The absence of exports from Ukraine will deal a blow to countries worldwide.”
Speaking via video link, he also called on energy producing countries to increase their output so that Russia cannot use its oil and gas wealth to “blackmail” other nations.
US President Joe Biden saw Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov in the Polish capital Warsaw in his first face-to-face meeting with top Ukrainian officials since the start of the war.
Biden’s visit to Poland was his final stop on a trip to Europe that has underscored his opposition to the Russian invasion, his solidarity with Ukraine and his determination to work closely with Western allies to confront the crisis.
The Russian defence ministry said its troops had seized a dug-in command centre in a Kyiv suburb and captured more than 60 Ukrainian servicemen. Reuters could not immediately verify this.
A British intelligence report said Russian forces were relying on indiscriminate air and artillery bombardments rather than risk large-scale ground operations, a tactic the report said could limit Russian military casualties but would harm more civilians in Ukraine.


Biden’s ‘butcher’ remarks create row

• Not for Biden to say Putin “cannot remain in power”: Kremlin
• Remarks were not about regime change: White House official

US President Joe Biden said that Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” in Poland yesterday, remarks a White House official said later were meant to prepare the world’s democracies for extended conflict over Ukraine, not back regime change in Russia.
Biden’s comments yesterday, including a statement earlier in the day calling Putin a “butcher,” were a sharp escalation of the US approach to Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
In a major address delivered at Warsaw’s Royal Castle, Biden evoked Poland’s four decades behind the Iron Curtain in an effort to build a case that the world’s democracies must urgently confront an autocratic Russia as a threat to global security and freedom.
But a remark at the end of the speech raised the spectre of an escalation by Washington, which has avoided direct military involvement in Ukraine, and has specifically said it does not back regime change.
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden told a crowd in Warsaw after condemning Putin’s month-long war in Ukraine.
A White House official said Biden’s remarks did not represent a shift in Washington’s policy.
“The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region,” the official said. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”
Asked about Biden’s comment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters: “That’s not for Biden to decide. The president of Russia is elected by Russians.”