Ukrainian children riding an evacuation train through Kyiv as it traveled west toward Lviv while Russian attacks against Ukrainian targets continued on Thursday.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
By Michael Schwirtz and Richard Pérez-Peña
March 3, 2022
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ODESSA, Ukraine — Russian forces advanced deeper into southern Ukraine on Thursday, appearing intent on seizing the country’s entire Black Sea coast, as the number of people fleeing Ukraine reached one million just a week into Russia’s invasion and bombardment of cities and towns.
Defiant Ukrainians, bolstered by a huge influx of weapons from NATO countries, have put up surprisingly effective resistance, while Moscow’s forces have run into a host of logistical problems, according to Western military and intelligence assessments.
But the Russians, with numerical and technological superiority, have been slowed, not stopped, and the Kremlin insisted in a statement that the war was “going according to plan.”
Russian forces surging out of Crimea cut off Mariupol, a port city to the east, while to the west, where they seized the city of Kherson on Wednesday, they advanced on the port of Mykolaiv, leaving them just 60 miles from Odessa, a vital shipping center and the largest city in the south.
In a second round of talks held in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine agreed to establish “humanitarian corridors,” with possible cease-fires in them, for civilians to evacuate the most dangerous areas, and to allow food and medicine to reach those places. But there was no sign of progress on resolving the overall conflict.
Damaged buildings following shelling in Borodyanka, near Kyiv. PHOTO: REUTERS/MAKSIM LEVIN
Russia deepened its military offensive in southern Ukraine, penetrating the city of Kherson, as the campaign stalled in the north of the country and the two sides prepared to resume cease-fire talks (
Kherson is the first regional capital to come under Russian occupation after more than a week of heavy fighting and shelling. Local authorities said they were working to restore electricity and heat, deliver food and other vital supplies to the city and collect dead bodies from its streets.
Ukrainian forces have managed to stymie Russia’s advance on the capital of Kyiv and second-largest city, Kharkiv. The resistance has pushed the Kremlin to shift to a strategy of indiscriminate attacks, shelling civilian areas in an attempt to demoralize Ukraine’s population.
Russia stepped up pressure on Ukraine to hold a second round of cease-fire talks. The first round, on Monday, didn’t achieve concrete results.
WSJ Podcast: Brett Forrest looks at the impact of the Russian attack on civilians in Kyiv.Live updates: Follow WSJ's full coverage of the conflict.
Russia’s near-monopoly on naval power in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov should have provided additional firepower to assist ground troops. Instead, their advance has been sluggish, hampered by operational breakdowns and a seeming inability of commanders to coordinate disparate military forces, which if combined effectively should have easily overwhelmed Ukraine’s defenses.
Unshaven and haggard, Mr. Zelensky, who has emerged as an anti-Kremlin hero in the West for defying Mr. Putin and remaining in Kyiv, held his first news conference since the invasion, in a room lined with sandbags in case of shelling. He expressed willingness to compromise but did not specify on what issues, and held out little hope of reaching an agreement anytime soon. “The Russian side has long ago formed the answers to their questions,” he told reporters.
Mr. Zelensky, like some Western officials, said many Russian soldiers, including some taken prisoner, had no idea they would be sent into Ukraine and were aghast to learn it, not understanding why they would be conducting such a war. “They don’t know why they are here,” he said in a speech posted on his Facebook page. “These are not warriors of a superpower. These are confused children who have been used.”
Moscow had sought to play down the number of Russian casualties for much of the first week of the war, limiting public comments to saying that the losses it had suffered were significantly lower than those on the Ukrainian side, Evan Gershkovich reports.
Late Wednesday the ministry gave its first official accounting, saying 498 soldiers had been killed and 1,597 injured.
Ukraine hasn’t released its casualty figures, but says its military has killed 5,840 Russian troops. Ukrainian officials have put the invasion’s civilian death toll at about 2,000.
Over the past week, one million people in Ukraine have fled to neighboring countries, according to the United Nations.
The U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies are coming under increasing pressure to do more to help Ukraine, even as they face diminishing options for doing so, Nancy A. Youssef and Bojan Pancevski report.
One of the more drastic options discussed publicly has been a no-fly zone, which would stop Russian aircraft from launching strikes over Ukraine, eliminating a key military tactic. But the idea has been dismissed by the U.S. and NATO countries.
Sanctions, however, won’t have an immediate effect on the battlefield, Western leaders have acknowledged. They hope that the economic hit will bite the Russian economy rapidly, meaning that as the bombs fall on Kyiv, there will be Russian bank runs and Russian businesses collapsing.
The Biden administration canceled a routine test launch of an Air Force Minuteman III missile to avoid escalating nuclear tensions with Russia, reports Michael R. Gordon.
The aggressive sanctions that Western allies leveled against Russia left loopholes to allow payments for critical oil and gas supplies that fuel Europe and the world, but businesses are going even further, slapping a toxic label on anything to do with Russia, report Patricia Kowsmann, Julie Steinberg and Leslie Scism.
The impact of those sanctions has begun to reverberate on average Russians, Ann M. Simmons reports. (
Restrictions on technology sales that the U.S. and its allies are clamping on Russia are adding to the uncertain climate for businesses, though how hard the export controls hit the Russian economy, trade specialists said, will depend on enforcement, reports Kate O'Keeffe.
The U.S. is expected to ban Russian-flagged ships from entering U.S. ports, according to officials familiar with the matter, extending sanctions against the country following its invasion of Ukraine, Nancy A. Youssef and Costas Paris report.
The move, which follows a similar ban in the U.K., would be largely symbolic. Russian commercial ships represent less than 1% of cargo volumes to the U.S., according to shipping and port officials. Russian firms own a large fleet of oil tankers that usually aren’t Russian-flagged.