Ukraine-Russia War: Latest News – The New York Times
KYIV, Ukraine — A tall woman with blonde and pink hair and a small dachshund stood out among the crowd of police officers and volunteers at the checkpoint on the edge of Kyiv. She looked as if she were out for a stroll, but she had just survived a dangerous evacuation under mortar fire.
The woman, Sasha Myhova, 21, and her boyfriend, Stas Burykov, 19, were evacuated Friday from their home in Irpin, the northwestern suburb that has become one of the most fiercely contested areas in the three weeks of fighting since Russia’s invading troops advanced toward the capital and Ukrainian troops blocked their way.
“It was dangerous,” she said. “They were bombing as we drove.”
The heavy boom of artillery sounded again as she spoke. “Shells were landing right in our yard,” she said, pulling out a piece of metal shrapnel she had kept.
As the war in Ukraine settles into its fourth week, the suburbs on the edge of Kyiv have become important if unlikely front lines of the war, where the Russian and Ukrainian forces are stuck in a savage give-and-take at one of the gateways to the capital, in positions that have not really moved.
Blocked and badly mauled, Russian forces have nevertheless established positions around three sides of the capital. Ukrainian forces have successfully stalled them, and on Wednesday mounted a series of coordinated counterattacks to challenge those positions.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine hailed the defense of Kyiv, led by the commander of land forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, saying that Ukrainian forces had regained control of 30 settlements around the city in the counterattack. “The enemy suffered significant losses and was driven away from the capital,” he said.
Yet the mortar fire and gunfire was so heavy in Irpin that the Ukrainians stopped attempting further evacuations after the one that included Ms. Myhova. The Ukrainian counterattack seems to have been met by a ferocious response from Russian forces. Residents and volunteers helping evacuate them said Russian artillery fire and even machine gun fire had intensified over the last few days.
One man, Vitaliy Kalman, was standing beside his suitcase hoping for a lull in the fighting. He said he had tried to go back into the district to retrieve some clothes from his apartment but came under mortar fire just beyond the ruined bridge that marks the entrance into Irpin. The bridge was destroyed by Ukrainian troops to forestall advancement by Russian troops in the first days of the war.
“They are very close,” he said of the Russians. “I saw the shell explode just near my house, and I ran back here with the evacuation team.”
A volunteer member of the Territorial Defense Forces described the street fighting in Irpin as an all-out guerrilla war. On the attacking side are the…
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