Ukraine war: Desperate Russian troops adopt ‘siege tactics’

Desperate Russian troops are starting to adopt brutal ‘siege tactics’ in Ukraine that will greatly increase the likelihood of civilians being killed in Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression, US defence officials have claimed.

Ukraine appears to be keeping its grip on Kharkiv, the country’s second biggest city, after troops repelled Kremlin forces storming the city this morning.

Footage shared on social media showed Russian trucks rolling through the city, which sits in Ukraine’s east close to the Russian border. 

Soldiers were also seen marching through Kharkiv on foot, with a very dramatic clip showing Russians slowly advancing along a road before running and firing their guns as Ukrainians opened fire on them.

Another clip shared online shows an army vehicle said to belong to the Russians ablaze, with locals saying it had been torched by Ukrainians seeking to defend their city, while troops with yellow armbands were earlier seen in a firefight with a convoy of Russian troops.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence today claimed Ukrainian troops had killed or injured more than 4,300 Russian soldiers in the first three days of fighting. Russia has not released an updates on its military losses.

It is thought that Putin underestimated the level of resistance that Russia would meet from Kyiv’s troops, and was overly reliant on trying to panic Ukraine into surrender. 

Washington now assesses that Moscow could resort to deadly siege tactics that ‘increases the likelihood of collateral damage to civilian infrastructure and life’.

Meanwhile, former UK military intelligence officer Philip Ingram said on Sunday night: ‘We are entering one of the most dangerous phases of the conflict to date. 

‘Putin must deploy all his resources, including the threat of nuclear weapons, in a bid to regain the initiative. 

‘If Ukraine can blunt Russia’s moves on the ground at major population centres such as Kyiv and Kharkiv for another few days, Putin could be forced to lower his expectations.’ 

An American official told Reuters that Russia has experienced ‘failures’ in some of its missile launches. 

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said: ‘We don’t know if it’s a failure in planning or a failure in execution’. They added that Russia does not have a lot of experience moving on another nation-state of the size and complexity of Ukraine, which could explain Moscow’s sluggish offensive.

Oleh Sinehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional administration, had urged civilians not to leave their homes, while Denys Monastyrsky, Deputy Minister of Interior for Ukraine, advised civilians to stay home and to shoot and throw Molotov cocktails at Russian troops from their windows.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in its latest intelligence update that there had been an ‘intensive’ exchange of rocket artillery in the city overnight, followed by ‘heavy fighting’ between Ukrainian and Russian forces. It said fighting in the capital Kyiv had been ‘less intense’ than previous nights.

However, reports in Ukrainian newspapers suggest troops have managed to successfully repel the Russian advance on Kharkiv, with one British reporter on the ground confirming that the city remains under Ukrainian control despite this morning’s attack.

Sinehubov said Ukraine had managed to reclaim the city. In a post on Telegram, he said: ‘Control over Kharkiv is completely ours! The armed forces, the national police, and the defence forces are working and the city is being completely cleansed of the enemy.

‘The Russian enemy is completely demoralised. In the middle of Kharkiv, abandoning vehicles in the middle of the road, whole groups of 5-10 people surrender to Ukrainian troops. As soon as they see at least one representative of the Ukrainian armed forces, they surrender.’ 

The early morning breach of Ukraine’s defences came hours after Russia was dealt a significant blow when a column of Chechen special forces sent to assassinate Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky were blown up by locals just two days into their mission.

The armed group – famed for their barbaric violence and human rights abuses – are said to have been obliterated after their convoy of 56 tanks was blown to smithereens near Hostomel, just northeast of Kyiv, by Ukrainian missile fire on the second day of the Chechens’ deployment. 

It is unclear how many died, but the number is likely to run into the hundreds 

Dr Rob Lee, an expert on the Russian military, said: ‘Sunday may have been the worst day for the Russian military in Ukraine so far. 

‘They are still advancing but there were a number of videos of destroyed or abandoned equipment and units.

‘The restrained strategy has also allowed the Ukrainian military to achieve successes, build momentum and buy time.’ 

The deaths of the Chechen units were reported by The Kyiv Independent news outlet as officials in Kyiv revealed that they’d managed to maintain control of Ukraine’s capital city throughout combat on Saturday night and into Sunday morning.

First Deputy Chairman of Kyiv City State Administration Mykola Povoroznyk said: ‘The situation in Kyiv is calm, the capital is fully controlled by the Ukrainian army and the terror defense. At night there were several clashes with sabotage group.’

But while fighting raged in the north, Russian forces said they had successfully blocked Kherson and Berdyansk in the south, effectively opening up a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean peninsula which it annexed in 2014.

Among the Chechens said to have been wiped out was general Magomed Tushaev. He was commander of the 141th motorized national guard brigade – Chechen head of state Ramzan Kadyrov’s elite force.

Tushaev had also been pictured with Kadyrov, in a measure of his importance to the Chechen regime, which shot to notoriety in the west for hunting down, torturing and killing gay men. Kadyrov is even believed to have visited his doomed squadron in a Ukrainian forest before their alleged deaths.

The terror squadron’s reported killings are a crushing psychological blow for Putin’s stalled efforts to conquer Ukraine. 

However, while experts suggest recent events display a failing Russian campaign, an intelligence source with links to Russian officials told the Daily Mail on Sunday night: ‘The messaging inside Russia is that the campaign was temporarily halted for political reasons rather than military reasons, after the Ukrainians requested talks.

‘Officials are pleased to see the mass exodus of refugees because they believe countries in continental Europe will be displeased by the arrival of so many Ukrainians.’

Zelensky’s office said on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine would meet at an unspecified location on the Belarusian border and did not give a precise time for the meeting.

Russia had announced that its delegation had flown to Belarus to await talks. Ukrainian officials initially rejected the move, saying any talks should take place elsewhere than Belarus, where Moscow placed a large contingent of troops before it invaded Ukraine starting Thursday.

In a dramatic escalation of international tensions, Putin ordered Russian nuclear forces to be put on high alert in response to what he called ‘aggressive statements’ by NATO powers. The order to put Moscow’s nuclear weapons in an increased state of readiness for launch raised fears that the crisis could boil over into nuclear warfare, whether by design or miscalculation.  

‘Western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere, but top officials from leading NATO members made aggressive statements regarding our country,’ the Russian tyrant said in televised comments.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Putin is resorting to a pattern he used in the weeks before launching the invasion, ‘which is to manufacture threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression’.

She told ABC’s This Week that Russia has not been under threat from NATO or Ukraine. ‘And we’re going to stand up,’ Psaki said, adding: ‘We have the ability to defend ourselves, but we also need to call out what we’re seeing here.’

NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg told CNN, in reaction to Putin’s decision to put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert: ‘This is dangerous rhetoric. This is a behaviour which is irresponsible.’

Russia and the United States typically have land-based and submarine-based nuclear forces on alert and prepared for combat at all times, but nuclear-capable bombers and other aircraft are not.

If Putin is arming or otherwise raising the nuclear combat readiness of his bombers, or if he is ordering more ballistic missile submarines to sea, then the United States might feel compelled to respond in kind, said Hans Kristensen, a nuclear analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. 

Putin has not disclosed his ultimate plans, but Western officials believe he is determined to overthrow Ukraine’s government and replace it with a regime of his own, redrawing the map of Europe and reviving Moscow’s Cold War-era influence. 

The pressure on strategic ports in the south of Ukraine appeared aimed at seizing control of the country’s coastline stretching from the border with Romania in the west to the border with Russia in the east.

A Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said Russian forces had blocked the cities of Kherson on the Black Sea and the port of Berdyansk on the Azov Sea. He said the Russian forces also took control of an airbase near Kherson and the Azov Sea city of Henichesk.

Ukrainian authorities have also reported fighting near Odesa, Mykolaiv and other areas.

Cutting Ukraine’s access to its sea ports would deal a major blow to the country’s economy. It could also allow Moscow to build a land corridor to Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014 and until now was connected to Russia by a 12 mile bridge, the longest bridge in Europe which opened in 2018.

Flames billowed from an oil depot near an airbase in Vasylkiv, a city 23 miles south of Kyiv where there has been intense fighting, according to the mayor.

Russian forces blew up a gas pipeline in Kharkiv, prompting the government to warn people to cover their windows with damp cloth or gauze as protection from smoke, the president’s office said.

The United Nations’ refugee agency said on Sunday that about 368,000 Ukrainians have arrived in neighbouring countries since the invasion started Thursday. The UN has estimated the conflict could produce as many as 4million refugee.

Zelensky denounced Russia’s offensive as ‘state terrorism’. He said the attacks on Ukrainian cities should be investigated by an international war crimes tribunal and cost Russia its place as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

As Russia pushes ahead with its offensive, the West is working to equip the outnumbered Ukrainian forces with weapons and ammunition while punishing Russia with far-reaching sanctions intended to further isolate Moscow.

The US pledged an additional $350million in military assistance to Ukraine, including anti-tank weapons, body armour and small arms.

Germany said it would send missiles and anti-tank weapons to the besieged country and that it would close its airspace to Russian planes.

The US, the EU and Britain agreed to block ‘selected’ Russian banks from the Swift global financial messaging system, which moves money around more than 11,000 banks and other financial institutions worldwide, part of a new round of sanctions aiming to impose a severe cost on Moscow for the invasion.They also agreed to impose ‘restrictive measures’ on Russia’s central bank.

With Ukraine’s military putting up a staunch defence, Putin’s forces are also reportedly being bogged down by poor planning and ineffective coordination. Many units are reportedly operating without the protection of air cover.  

With Russia’s invasion stalling three days in, UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey, writing in The Telegraph, warned Putin’s days ‘will surely be numbered’ if he fails in his ambition to take Kyiv. 

‘Progress to Kyiv has been much slower than they’d expected, they were unable to take key cities early and now must try to bypass them,’ he wrote.

‘This leaves pockets of well-armed and well-trained Ukrainians to the rear of the Russian front line, exposing a vulnerable logistics tail – an omen for what awaits Putin.’ 

Mr Heappey, a former major in the Rifles, said if Putin failed and the Russian people could be shown ‘how little he cares for them… Putin’s days as president will surely be numbered and so too will those of the kleptocratic elite that surround him. He’ll lose power and he won’t get to choose his successor.’ 

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence today claimed it had killed more than 4,300 Russian soldiers in the first three days of fighting.

The government department today took to Twitter to share a post by Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Maliar in which it said Ukrainian troops had also taken out more than 140 tanks, 27 aircraft and 700 armoured vehicles. Russia has not given any updates on its losses.

In a post on Facebook, Ms Maliar said: ‘We get the information only after the battle, and the battles are extremely long. Data can be received the next day, and sometimes every other day. 

‘In addition, if the battle lasted at night, and began on one calendar date, and ended on another, it is quite difficult to separate on what day the losses occurred.’ 

Outside of Kharkiv, in the northeastern Ukrainian town of Koryukivka, brave residents were seen forming a line to prevent a tank going through, before walking the armored vehicle back as it reversed. 

However there are fears that delays in Russia’s invasion plan could lead Putin to become more desperate in his attempts to crush Ukrainian resolve.

A Russian thermobaric rocket launcher was spotted by a US film crew south of Belgorod, Russia, near the Ukrainian border.

The weapons, which contain a highly explosive fuel and chemical mix and send out supersonic blast waves that can rip buildings and bodies apart, can reduce cities to rubble and would cause huge loss of life. 

On Sunday morning, it emerged Russian missiles hit a nuclear waste disposal site outside of Kyiv – and destroyed the equipment that can detect leaks of radioactive material, as it was revealed that at least 240 Ukrainian civilians have been killed. 

A chilling update shared by Ukrainian news website BNO Sunday said: ‘As a result of the mass bombing of Kyiv with all types of anti-aircraft and missile weapons available to the Russian Federation, the missiles that hit the radioactive waste disposal site of the Kyiv Branch of the State Specialized enterprise ‘Radon.’

BNO claimed that there was ‘no evidence of a leak’, but then elaborated by saying that ‘the automated radiation monitoring system failed’ – meaning that dangerous nuclear material could well have been spilled. 

Unconfirmed reports that a cancer hospital for children in Kyiv had been shelled by Russians forces meanwhile have also been debunked.

Ukrainian news site TSN said at least one child, a six-year-old boy, had been killed after the Okhmadyt children’s cancer hospital in Kyiv was struck by artillery fire on Sunday morning, reports.

The Kyiv Independent said that at least two children and two adults were wounded in the attack while a picture allegedly showing material covering the body of a child was shared by former Ukrainian ambassador Olexander Scherba.

However the New York Times has rebuffed the claims, saying that while gunfire had been heard near to the hospital, it had not bee targeted by artillery fire.

Local newspaper The Kyiv Independent wrote that an oil depot had been blown up at Vasylkiv Air Base. The city which sits around 40 kilometers south west of Kyiv, close to a key airport. A gas pipeline was also blown up in Kharkiv, a city in eastern Ukraine which sits close to the Russian border.

Video footage showed a mushroom cloud fill the city’s sky as the fuel line was destroyed, with a group of people who filmed the clip heard exclaiming with shock as the ball of flames erupted into the sky. It is unclear if anyone was injured or killed by either blast.  

Elon Musk risked aggravating the Russian autocrat further Saturday, after answered a plea from Ukraine’s vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov to switch on his Starlink satellites over the country. That means locals will still be able to use the internet if Russia destroys the country’s telecommunications network. 

Ukrainians are particularly keen to push back against Russian propaganda and lies about the atrocities being inflicted by Putin and his troops. 

President Volodymyr Zelensky has so-far managed to avoid Russian kill squads deployed to capture and assassinate him, and shared updates earlier on Saturday vowing to fight on, having previously conceded he was unlikely to survive the conflict when it inevitably intensifies. 

The Vasylkiv blasts – said to have been triggered by Russian ballistic missiles – filled the skies over Kyiv with an eerie orange glow in the early hours of Sunday morning.  It is unclear if anyone was injured or killed in the explosions. 

The explosions were first reported by CNN and stuck close to the Ukrainian capital’s secondary airport, Boryspil International. They took place around 15 minutes apart, and set of car alarms miles from the explosion epicenter.  

Ukrainian TV station Nexta shared footage of flames and black clouds billowing into the sky at the site of the Vasylkiv attack as the fuel burned.  It has also since shared a clip of the moment the oil depot was struck, with a bright white glow filling the darkened night sky as the fuel store ignited. 

The statement the outlet shared said that a ‘preliminary assessment’ showed there was ‘no threat of radioactive’ exposure to people outside the immediate vicinity, with a further examination set to take place when the area is made safe. 

The blast came as two Ukrainian cities were rocked by Russian blasts in the early hours of Sunday as Vladimir Putin stepped up his invasion – after it was claimed he has been infuriated by his army’s lack of progress. 

And the UN released the first official death toll Sunday, saying that at least 240 civilians have so-far been killed in the conflict. On Saturday night, an unidentified woman became the latest victim of the conflict after a Russian artillery shell struck a nine-story residential apartment block in Kharkiv, killing her as she sat inside. 

People as far away as Kyiv have since been urged to keep their windows shut to protect them from potentially harmful fumes released by the explosion and subsequent inferno. 

Russia was widely-expected to step-up its attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure in a bid to try and cower locals into submission. 

Forces have been met with far greater resistance than the Kremlin is said to have expected, sparking reports that Putin has been angered that locals have not capitulated to the might of his armed forces as quickly as expected. 

Vasylkiv mayor Natalia Balasynovych told the Independent that her city and its airfield sustained heavy shelling from ballistic missiles. She said: ‘The enemy wants to destroy everything around, but he will not succeed. Hold on!’ 

She later recorded a Facebook message for locals, saying: ‘You can see what is going on, you can see the fire – unfortunately, this is the petroleum storage depot in Kriachky village. 

‘The enemy wants to destroy everything around, but he will not be successful. You’ve seen that during the day there was heavy shelling from ballistic missiles. Our airfield was shelled as well, but we got it, it’s under control of Ukraine.

‘The night will be difficult here, as well as in Kyiv, but we will stand our ground and we will win, because God is with us.’

Vasylkiv had suffered heavy Russian bombardment in the early hours of Saturday, as Russian troops fought to try and seize control of a key strategic staging post on the road to Kyiv.   

Kyiv’s 2.9 million citizens face another night of terror as it was claimed Russia will step up its bombardment on Saturday night, and target commercial businesses in a bid to destroy Ukrainian morale. 

Many have fled to underground shelters in a bid to stay safe, although other men and women have taken to the streets with weapons in a bid to fend off any Russian advance. 

BNO News also shared footage of heavy shelling in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, with the night sky there lit up by the orange glow of explosions. 

Last night there was also reportedly strikes on an oil terminal in the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNP) at Rovenky, a coal mining city.

An LPR source said: ‘It could have possibly been a missile attack, our emergency services have left to the site.’ The source of the alleged attack in the LPR was unclear. 

Donald Trump – who touted his close relationship with Vladimir Putin while he was president – condemned the attack while speaking at the CPAC conservative conference in Florida Saturday night.

Trump said: ‘The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling, it’s an outrage and an atrocity that should never have been allowed to occur. It never would have occurred. We are praying for the proud people of Ukraine. God bless them all.’

Around 200 Ukrainian civilians are estimated to have been killed so far. Meanwhile, Ukraine has claimed to have killed 3,500 Russian troops, including hundreds believed to have died when two transport jets were shot down Friday night.

Those losses and the continued failure to seize Kyiv have left Vladimir Putin furious, according to Estonia’s former defense chief Riho Terras.

Terras wrote on Twitter: ‘ Putin is furious, he thought that the whole war would be easy and everything would be done in 1-4 days.

‘The Russians are in shock of the fierce resistance they have encountered.’

The defense expert went on to claim Russia was failing because it had failed to enact a ‘tactical plan’ and beyond expecting the attack to ‘sew panic among civilians and armed forces and force (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky to flee.’

Terras shared an image of a a piece of paper said to be a defense document which proclaimed: ‘Putin is raging. He was sure it would be a cake walk.’