A defiant mayor of a captured city was kidnapped by Russian troops, Ukrainian authorities say, an act that prompted hundreds to protest.
Russian forces intensified their campaign of devastation aimed at cities and towns across Ukraine, attacking Kyiv and a strategic port on Saturday and detaining the defiant mayor of a captured city, an act that prompted hundreds of outraged Ukrainians to pour into the streets in protest. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine accused Moscow of terrorizing the nation in an attempt to break the will of the people. “A war of annihilation,” he called it. He denounced what he called the kidnapping of the mayor of Melitopol, who had refused to cooperate with Russian troops after they seized the southeastern city in the first days of the invasion, as “a new stage of terror, when they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of the legitimate local Ukrainian authorities.” Russian forces have not achieved a major military victory since the first days of the invasion more than two weeks ago, and the assaults on Saturday reinforced Moscow’s strategic turn toward increasingly indiscriminate shelling of civilian targets. Unable to mount a quick takeover of the country by air, land and sea, Russian troops have deployed missiles, rockets and bombs to destroy apartment buildings, schools, factories and hospitals, increasing civilian carnage and suffering, and leading more than 2.5 million people to flee the country. In response to American efforts to supply the Ukrainian military with antitank weapons and other matériel, Russia issued a new and more direct threat on Saturday, warning the United States that convoys with weapons sent to Ukraine would be “legitimate targets” for the Russian military. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, said on Russian television that Moscow had warned Washington that the “thoughtless transfer of such types of weapons as portable antiaircraft and antitank missile systems” to Ukraine could lead to serious consequences. The heavy shelling and lack of food, water and medicine for thousands of residents in the besieged city of Mariupol have already led to what Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, called “the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet.” At least 1,582 civilians have died since the Russian siege of Mariupol began 12 days ago, he said, and residents are struggling to survive and have been forced to bury the dead in mass graves. “There is no drinking water and any medication for more than one week, maybe even 10 days,” a staff member who works for Doctors Without Borders in Mariupol said in an audio recording released by the organization on Saturday. “We saw people who died because of lack of medication, and there are a lot of such people inside Mariupol,” the staff member said.
