There was no sign of possible de-escalation on the sixth day of the invasion, as Russia appeared determined to toughen its tactics against a defiant neighbor.
Brushing aside international outrage, Russia widened its assault deep inside Ukraine on Tuesday, bombing civilian areas in the two biggest cities, amassing a miles-long convoy near the capital’s doorstep and warning an outside world intent on economic reprisals not to go too far. The Russian attacks hit a hospital in Kharkiv — the second consecutive day of lethal Russian strikes on that eastern city’s civilian population — and a deadly blast struck a broadcasting tower in the capital, Kyiv, knocking out television and radio stations. A famous Holocaust memorial nearby sustained damage. The escalation came amid rumors in Moscow and other Russian cities that the government might increase conscription to bolster its troop strength in Ukraine, where a surprisingly defiant resistance appears to have frustrated Kremlin expectations of quick victory. Now, the conflict in Ukraine looks as if it might become a more drawn-out fight that could plunge Europe into its worst refugee crisis of this century as hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians seek safety elsewhere. With the Russian economy already reeling from an array of sanctions, associates of President Vladimir V. Putin reacted sharply to a declaration by France’s finance minister that Europe would wage “total economic and financial war” against Russia. “Watch your tongue, gentlemen!” Dmitri A. Medvedev, a former Russian prime minister, declared on Twitter. “And don’t forget that in human history, economic wars quite often turned into real ones.” On Tuesday, the sixth day of the invasion, satellite images showed a miles-long Russian military convoy making its way on a roadway north of Kyiv as a number of homes and buildings burned nearby. When it would make a move to enter the capital remained unclear. The Kyiv transmission tower was struck after the Russian Defense Ministry had warned civilians to evacuate. Moscow said its military was engaged in “high-precision” strikes to “prevent information attacks against Russia.” But damage from the strike also extended to Kyiv’s Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, built in a ravine where tens of thousands of Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II. President Volodomyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who is Jewish, denounced the strike, which he said had killed five people. “What is the point of saying ‘never again’ for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar?” he said on Twitter. In the main square of Kharkiv, an apparent rocket strike devastated a large administrative building, igniting a fireball and killing seven people, officials said. The city’s mayor said another rocket attack on a residential neighborhood had destroyed a hospital and left several people dead or maimed. The Russian attacks came just hours before the Kremlin’s most powerful critic, President Biden, was scheduled to give his first State of the Union speech in Washington. “What we are seeing is basically Phase II, which is a shift to much more brutal, tactless, unrestricted warfare, which will lead to many more civilian casualties and bloodier battles,” said Mathieu Boulègue, an expert in Russian warfare at Chatham House, a research group in London.
