Russia bombards areas where it pledged to scale back

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces bombarded areas around Kyiv and another city just hours after pledging to scale back operations in those zones to promote trust between the two sides, Ukrainian authorities said Wednesday.

The shelling — and intensified Russian attacks on other parts of the country — tempered optimism about any progress in the talks aimed at ending the punishing war.

The Russian military’s announcement Tuesday that it would deescalate near the capital and the northern city of Chernihiv to “increase mutual trust and create conditions for further negotiations” was met with deep suspicion from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the West.

This handout picture released on March 30, 2022 by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine shows rescuers conducting search operations and dismantling the debris of a government building in Mykolaiv, which was hit by Russian rockets the previous day. (STR/)

Soon after, Ukrainian officials reported that Russian shelling hit homes, stores, libraries and other civilian sites in and around Chernihiv and on the outskirts of Kyiv. Russian troops also stepped up their attacks around the eastern city of Izyum and the eastern Donetsk region, after redeploying units from other areas, the Ukrainian side said.

Olexander Lomako, secretary of the Chernihiv City Council, said the Russian announcement turned out to be “a complete lie.”

“At night they didn’t decrease, but vice versa increased the intensity of military action,” Lomako said.

Five weeks into the invasion that has left thousands dead on both sides, the number of Ukrainians fleeing the country topped a staggering 4 million, half of them children, according to the United Nations.

“I do not know if we can still believe the Russians,” Nikolay Nazarov, a refugee from Ukraine, said as he pushed his father’s wheelchair at a border crossing into Poland. “I think more escalation will occur in eastern Ukraine. That is why we cannot go back to Kharkiv.”

Mariya, a local resident, looks for personal items in the rubble of her house, destroyed during fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the village of Yasnohorodka, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 30, 2022. (VADIM GHIRDA/)

Top Russian officials reacted positively to the talks, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying Wednesday that Ukraine’s willingness to accept neutrality and look outside NATO for security represents “significant progress,” according to Russian news agencies.

After the Kremlin’s announcement that it would scale back some of its military operations, Zelenskyy reacted by saying that when dealing with the Russians, “you can trust only concrete results.” That assessment was echoed by President Biden and by British Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, who noted suspicions that Russia intends to regroup and attack again.

The skepticism appeared well-founded on Wednesday.

Oleksandr Pavliuk, head of the Kyiv region military administration, said Russian shells targeted residential areas and civilian infrastructure in the Bucha, Brovary and Vyshhorod regions around the capital.

A relative mourns on the coffin with the body of 3 year-old Mykola Goryainiv, who died with his parents as they were driving a car trying to evacuate from a fighting zone in Kharkiv region, during a funeral ceremony in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 30, 2022. (Andriy Andriyenko/)

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the military also targeted fuel depots in two towns in central Ukraine with air-launched long-range cruise missiles. And Russian forces hit a Ukrainian special forces headquarters in the southern Mykolaiv region, he said, and two ammunition depots in the Donetsk region.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that over the last 24 hours, the U.S. has seen some Russian troops moving north away from Kyiv into Belarus but does not view this as a withdrawal, just an effort by Moscow to resupply and then reposition the troops.

Top Russian military officials have said in recent days that their main goal now is the “liberation” of Donbas, the predominantly Russian-speaking industrial heartland in the east, where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014. Western officials say Moscow is reinforcing its troops in the Donbas, which includes the Donetsk region.

Some analysts have suggested that the apparent scaling back of the Kremlin’s war aims and pledge to deescalate may merely be an effort to put a positive spin on reality: Moscow’s ground troops have been thwarted — and have taken heavy losses — in their bid to seize the capital and other cities.

A Ukrainian soldier walks past the bodies of Russian soldiers laying on the ground after the Ukranian troops retook the village of Mala Rogan, east of Kharkiv, on March 30, 2022. (FADEL SENNA/)

Meanwhile, a missile destroyed part of an apartment block in the rebel-controlled city of Donetsk early Wednesday, and two people were reported killed. Separatists blamed Ukrainian forces for the attack.

“I was just sitting on the couch and — bang! — the window glass popped, the frames came off. I didn’t even understand what happened,” said resident Anna Gorda.

The UN food aid agency said it is providing emergency assistance to 1 million people in Ukraine. It said the food includes 330,000 freshly baked loaves of bread for families in the heavily bombarded eastern city of Kharkiv.

“Children are suffering, and our city, and everything,” Tetyana Parmynska, a 28-year-old from the Chernihiv region now at a refugee center in Poland, said as songs were being played on a battered piano decorated with a peace emblem. “We have no strength anymore.