Fighting rages near Kyiv, fears for evacuations
STORY: Air raid sirens, gunfire and explosions at dawn. Fighting raged outside Kyiv on Saturday (March 12).
And Ukrainian officials said heavy shelling and threats of Russian air attacks were endangering attempted evacuations of desperate civilians from encircled towns and cities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia was sending in new troops after Ukrainian forces had put 31 of its battalion tactical groups out of action. He said they were Russia's largest army losses in decades.
He gave no details and neither statement could be verified.
Russian rocket attacks destroyed a Ukrainian airbase and hit an ammunition depot in the Kyiv region on Saturday morning, Interfax Ukraine quoted the local mayor as saying.
This is what's left of the village of Byshiv, outside Kyiv, after a bombing raid.
Most Russian ground forces are 16 miles from Kyiv centre, according to Britain's defense ministry. It says Moscow could attack the capital in a few days.
The cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remained encircled under heavy Russian shelling, it said.
The governor of Chernihiv, around 100 miles northeast of Kyiv, gave this video update in front of the ruins of its Ukraine Hotel, which he said had been hit on Saturday.
"There is no such hotel any more," Viacheslav Chaus says, wiping tears from his eyes. "But Ukraine itself still exists, and it will prevail."
Moscow has denied targeting civilians.
Zelenskiy also said he had spoken to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron about pressuring Russia to release the mayor of the city of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, whom Ukraine says was kidnapped on Friday by Russian forces.
Russia hasn't commented on his fate.
Russia's defense ministry released this video of what it said was its military on the move in Ukraine.
Zelenskiy said his country could not stop fighting but was upholding a ceasefire around an agreed humanitarian corridor out of the southern port of Mariupol, which has been under an almost two-week siege, and called on Russia to do the same.
Moscow has previously blamed Kyiv for failed evacuations.
Putin launched the invasion on Feb. 24 in a what Moscow calls a special military operation to demilitarise Ukraine.
It has been near universally condemned around the world and drawn tough Western sanctions on Russia.
