Russian Invasion: After a long fight with Russian soldiers, Ukraine kept its second-largest city, Kharkiv, on Sunday, local leaders said.
Kharkiv Oblast is located in Kharkiv, Ukraine. On social media, Gov. Oleg Synyehubov stated that Russian troops and saboteurs who invaded the northeastern city had surrendered. In what the British Ministry of Defense described as a “heavy” battle, the Russians moved armored vehicles into the city’s center.
About 1.5 million people live in the city, the majority of whom speak Russian. According to the Washington Post, Kharkiv’s inhabitants are uninterested in independence, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has little authority over them.
According to a post on his Telegram channel, Synyehubov cautioned Ukrainians in the city to stay indoors because leftover Russian fighters might open fire. According to him, the invading army detonated a gas pipeline in the area.
According to the Kyiv Independent news outlet, the battle in the city lasted at least four hours, and Ukrainian forces seized Russian troops and saboteurs.
Fighting broke out in Ukraine’s second city four days after Russia invaded its western border, escalating months of tensions between the former Soviet countries. After former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin incorrectly accepted a separate Ukraine, Putin wrongly claimed that Ukraine was seized by Russia.
Putin is opposed to Ukraine’s joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which would increase the alliance’s area and move it closer to Russia’s border.
Russia’s deterrence forces, including its nuclear forces, were put on high alert on Sunday by Vladimir Putin.
Because top officials in leading NATO countries have permitted themselves to make threatening words about our country, “I now instruct the minister of defense and the chief of the general staff to set the Russian Army Deterrence Force on battle alert.”
The United States’ ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, slammed the move.
“It indicates that Putin is continuing to escalate this war in a way that is completely unacceptable,” she said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “We need to keep condemning these activities.”
Vladimir Putin agreed to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday, but he turned down the Belarusian President.
Of course, we want to meet and make peace. We want to put an end to the conflict. Russia was offered Warsaw, Poland, Bratislava, Slovakia, Istanbul, Turkey, and Baku, Azerbaijan. According to Zelensky, we are fine with any other cities as long as no missiles are launched from this country.
Battles raged in Kyiv for a second day on Sunday, though Russia was unable to take the capital due to “stronger than expected” resistance across the country, according to senior US officials. Kyiv has a population of 2.9 million people.
An early Sunday explosion appeared to target an oil depot in Vasilikov, just outside of Kyiv, causing a large fire. The depot was run by the Ukrainian gas company KLO, which supplied fuel to a chain of gas stations, according to The Washington Post.
Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, blamed the explosion on shelling in the area.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that fifteen wagons of diesel fuel and eight wagons of gas were saved within minutes of a Russian missile strike and explosion amid burning fuel tanks at the KLO oil depot.
Despite the fact that the death toll has been difficult to determine due to the fighting, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that at least 64 Ukrainian civilians had died.
Source: UPI
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