Russian convoy stretching back 40 MILES advances on Kyiv

A Russian military convoy traveling towards the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv has grown from being 17 miles long earlier on Monday to 40 miles, a satellite company has said, as U.S. officials warned that the city could be the scene of a siege and ugly urban warfare.

Maxar Technologies, a private U.S. satellite company, said additional ground forces deployments and ground attack helicopter units were seen in southern Belarus, less than 20 miles north of the Ukraine border.

Maxar said the convoy stretches from the Antonov airbase, 17 miles north of Kyiv’s city center, to just north of the Ukrainian town of Pribyrs’k. 

Pribyrs’k is closer to the Ukraine-Belarus border and the failed nuclear reactor at Chernobyl than to Kyiv.

On Sunday, Maxar had measured the convoy — then near Ivankiv, Ukraine — at roughly 3.5 miles long.  

White House sources told CNN they were carefully monitoring the convoy, and were concerned not only at its increased size but also at the uptick in violence and indiscriminate killings. 

U.S. intelligence officials told members of Congress on Monday that they expect a second overwhelming wave of attacks to engulf Kyiv. Two people told CNN that the briefing detailed how they expect the sheer numbers of Russian troops to flatten the Ukrainian resistance.

Another source told the channel that Russia was likely to lay siege to Kyiv, and predicted ugly scenes of urban warfare.  

The line of vehicles is so extensive that it was not entirely captured in Monday’s satellite imagery. 

In some areas, the vehicles are two to three rows deep.

It was not clear whether all vehicles in the convoy were headed for the same final destination, or whether the military forces would split up and encircle the capital.

U.S. intelligence believes around 75 percent of Russian forces positioned on the borders with Ukraine are now inside the country. 

News of the convoy came as the scale of the attacks over the weekend were becoming clear.

On Monday, Dmitry Zhivitsky, the head of the Sumy Military Administration in the east of the country, said that 70 Ukrainian soldiers were confirmed dead when they came under attack from Russian artillery on Sunday.

He said that many Russians also died, without giving details. 

Vitali Klitchsko, the former world heavyweight boxing champion who is now the mayor of Kyiv, said on Monday night that his city was frightened but determined.

‘We never were so patriotic,’ he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

‘I have never been so proud of our soldiers. Our soldiers are heroes. Civilians are building defenses. People are taking weapons and are ready to defend our homes, defend our families, our future and our country.

‘I am really proud. The army is not interested in how strong the Russian army is; we are ready to fight, and ready to die for our home. Because it is our future. Somebody wants to come to our home and steal our future from us.’

Asked how long Kyiv could hold out, he replied: ‘So long as we can survive.’

And, in a message to Putin, he said: ‘We don’t want the Soviet Union back. We want a free, democratic country. We are fighting for that – fighting for our dream.

‘We don’t need the war. We are a peaceful nation, a peaceful people.’ 

Earlier on Monday, he advised residents to spend the night from Monday to Tuesday in basements or bomb shelters, if possible. 

‘Tonight will again be difficult,’ he wrote in a statement. ‘I call on people in Kyiv to spend the night in a shelter.’ 

After a daylong curfew on Sunday, the mayor allowed residents to leave their homes during the day on Monday but few did. 

Ukraine on Monday announced it was applying to join the European Union – a move guaranteed to further anger Vladimir Putin.

On Monday evening, Vsevolod Chentsov, Head of the Ukrainian Mission to the E.U., tweeted photos of him handing over the documentation. 

‘Handed over application for the EU membership signed by President @ZelenskyyUa toPermRep to the EU Philippe Léglise-Costa, current Presidency of the Council of the EU @Europe2022FR,’ he said.

‘Application is registered. Process has been started. #UkraineIsEU #EUisUkraine.’ 

On Tuesday morning in Japan, the prime minister, Fumio Kishida – who comes from Hiroshima – said the G7 nations will urge the international community to unite against Russia.

‘It is important that all members of the international community respond resolutely to Russia’s acts,’ Kishida told reporters in a news conference after a call with G7 leaders and allies.

Kishida said the G7 nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States — and their partners had also agreed to help Ukrainian refugees following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Kishida said any use of nuclear force is unacceptable.

As Kishida spoke, the economic noose was tightening around Moscow.

Mastercard announced late on Monday it has ‘blocked multiple financial institutions’ from its payment network as a result of sanction orders against Russia.

The company’s chief executive, Michael Miebach, did not say which financial institutions had been blocked, only that Mastercard would ‘abide fully by our compliance obligations as they evolve.’ 

Hours earlier, Disney said they were banning their films from Russia.

They followed Uber, BP, Shell, HSBC and other companies in withdrawing from the country. There were bank runs reported in Russia on Monday, and the rouble suffered its biggest-ever loss against the dollar, plunging 40 percent. 

On Monday night, Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that a classified briefing to Congress confirmed that Putin was advancing slowed than he had hoped.

‘Just leaving classified briefing on Ukraine crisis. A few takeaways that I can share,’ he tweeted. 

‘1/ Confirmation that the Russians have fallen behind their timeline. Ukrainian resistance has been fierce and there have been multiple Russian equipment and logistics failures. 

‘2/ DoD and DHS are pressing hard for Congress to end the continuing resolution and get a budget passed. There is no way for our national security agencies to be nimble enough to support Ukraine if they are operating on the 2020/21 budget.

‘3/ The ability to keep supply lines running to Ukraine remains alive, but Russia will try to encircle and cut off Kiev in the next several weeks. The fight for Kiev will be long and bloody and Ukrainians are rapidly preparing for street to street combat.

‘4/ The U.S. and allies are coordinating to not only freeze the assets of Putin and his oligarch allies, but to seize those assets as well. This is likely a further step than Putin’s inner circle anticipated.’ 

Antonov airport, the closest Russian-held site to the center of Kyiv, was the scene of fierce fighting on Friday as it changed hands several times.

By Saturday, it was under Putin’s forces’ control. 

Kyiv was subjected to a strong attack on Friday night and into Saturday morning, as Russian forces attempted to enter the city from all sides.

From the north, troops were attacking from Antonov airport, with a thermal power plant in the suburb of Troieshchyna the focus of fighting.

From the east, Putin’s forces advanced towards Kyiv zoo, sparking fierce battles along Peremohy Avenue – a main artery into the city.

And from the south, fighting was raging near the town of Vasilkov, 20 miles south of Kyiv. 

On Monday, delegations representing Ukraine and Russia met in Belarus to discuss the future.

As soon as the discussions broke up, Russian forces began firing upon Kyiv. 

Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, said on Monday night that his country had so far in the five-day conflict been hit with 56 Russian missile strikes, and 113 cruise missiles were fired. 

He accused Russia of war crimes after Vladimir Putin’s forces launched what were believed to be cluster and vacuum bomb attacks on the fifth day of their invasion.

In a late night address directed at Russia, Zelensky said there would ‘definitely be an international tribunal’ for what he said was a ‘violation of all conventions’ and added that ‘no one in the world will forgive you for killing peaceful Ukrainian people.’

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said that he plans to open an investigation ‘as rapidly as possible’ into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. 

In the early hours of Tuesday, air raid sirens were sounding once again in the capital city.

Ukrainian media reported that the city of Kherson, 300 miles south of Kyiv on the Black Sea, was also coming under attack early on Tuesday, Nexta reported. 

The eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest, came under heavy attack on Monday, killing nine civilians, The New York Times reported.

‘Today showed that this is not only a war, it is the murder of us, the Ukrainian people,’ said Kharkiv’s mayor, Igor Terekhov, in a video posted on Facebook. 

‘This is the first time in its many-year history that the city of Kharkiv has been through something like this: shells that hit residential homes, killing and maiming innocent citizens.’ 

Terekhov said four people died on Monday when they emerged from bomb shelters to find water. 

A family of five — two adults and three children — was burned alive when a shell hit their car. 

Another 37 people were wounded, he said.  

Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S. claimed earlier on Monday that Russia used a devastating vacuum bomb on Ukraine.

Oksana Markarova, speaking after briefing members of the U.S. congress, said: ‘They used the vacuum bomb today, which is actually prohibited by the Geneva convention. The devastation that Russia is trying to inflict on Ukraine is large.’

The vacuum bombs, which are also known as thermobaric weapons, can vaporize bodies and crush internal organs. They use oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion, typically producing a blast wave of a significantly longer duration than that of a conventional explosive.

They are among the most powerful non-nuclear weapons ever developed.

The U.N. human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, said on Monday her office has confirmed that 102 civilians, including seven children, have been killed, and 304 others injured in violence in Ukraine since Thursday, as she cautioned that the tally was likely a vast undercount.

Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, on Monday voiced his anger at reports of ‘Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian cities and mounting civilian deaths,’ according to the State Department.

Blinken made the comments while on a call with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Monday.

Their conversation came amid reports that Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko is poised to throw his own troops into the fighting. 

The move follows on from Chechen forces being thrown into battle, which led to the almost-immediate destruction of a column of armored vehicles and the death of one of their top generals.

Belarus on Sunday also voted to amend the country’s constitution allowing them to host Russian nuclear weapons, which came after Putin’s chilling order to his defense chiefs to put the country’s nuclear weapons on ‘alert’ in response to ‘threats’ from the West.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that Russia’s decision to raise the nuclear alert was ‘a reckless, dangerous decision’. 

He added: ‘There’s no reason for that. NATO is no threat to Russia. We don’t seek confrontation with Russia.’