Russia Attacks UkraineUkrainian Fighters Battle to Hold Kyiv

Tetiana said they had tried for hours overnight to reach her mother but had not been able to because she had taken refuge in a bomb shelter. It was not until later in the morning, when her mother went to see what had become of her apartment, that the two were able to speak.

The grandmother described a terrifying night: After the explosion, she was rushed to a nearby school gym. An older woman died there of a heart attack, Tatiana said.

Yaroslawa doesn’t plan to leave, though. “The old people — they do not want to leave their homes,” Tetiana said.

Anna, her daughter, lived in Warsaw for six years and has spoken to friends in Poland who said that volunteers there could help them if they were able to make it across. But that will be a challenge.

People are reporting lines of cars that stretch for miles. Men of fighting age are not allowed to leave the country, so few drivers are willing to take the risk of approaching the area. It is largely women and children who, at the moment, have a chance to make it to Poland.

The nation that just moved “to wipe an entire country off the world map,” in the words of Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, also remains a key supplier of natural gas to keep Germans and many other Europeans warm. That explains why Mr. Biden has been constrained from cutting off the valuable export.

And the Russia of today has a panoply of cyberweapons that it can use to strike at the United States or its allies without risking nuclear Armageddon — an option to retaliate against American sanctions that was never available to President Vladimir V. Putin’s predecessors.

Those are only two examples of why containment will not be easy. But Mr. Biden has been clear that is where he is headed.

Russia’s use of its veto power in the Security Council to kill a resolution against its own aggression was the latest confirmation of India’s fears that structures such as the United Nations are stacked against India — and that China, also a permanent member with veto power, could do the same thing in a situation involving India. India, which is not a permanent Security Council member, shares deep historic ties with Russia and is dependent on it for much of its military equipment. India felt let down by NATO and the United States after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, an arena where India had closely aligned itself with the West.

India’s abstention in the U.N. vote, followed by an explanatory statement that called for an “immediate cessation of violence” without condemning the aggression or naming Russia, is in line with India’s leaders increasingly trying to protect its interests by working the gray area between world powers.

In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant suffered a meltdown that sent radioactive clouds over parts of Europe and locally left a wasteland of contaminated soil. All four Chernobyl reactors are still shut down, and the plant’s work force closely monitors the safety of Chernobyl’s Unit 4 reactor, which in 1986 exploded and caught fire. An exclusion zone for hundreds of square miles surrounds the abandoned plant to limit public access and inhabitation.

The sprawling plant — about 10 miles from Belarus, a Russian ally — is on one of Russia’s main invasion routes. Western experts said it was in Moscow’s interest to keep Ukraine’s reactors and electrical system running smoothly if its aim was regime change rather than national ruin.

He was alive. Kyiv had not fallen. Any reports of Ukraine laying down its arms was a lie, Mr. Zelensky said.

“I’m here,” he said. “We are not putting down any arms. We will protect our country, because our weapons are our truth. The truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will protect them all.”

“That is it. That’s what I wanted to tell you. Glory to Ukraine.”

His comments, released before 9 a.m., came as fighting intensified in Kyiv. What until three days ago had been a thriving European metropolis has been transformed into a battle zone. Russian troops pressed in from all directions.

There was intense street fighting, and bursts of gunfire and explosions could be heard across the city, including its heart, Maidan square, where in 2014 Ukrainian protests led to the toppling of a pro-Moscow government.

The Russian military has a decisive edge in cyberwarfare, tanks, heavy weaponry, missiles, fighter planes and warships. In sheer numbers, its military dwarfs that of Ukraine.

Russia has established attack lines into three cities — Kyiv in the north, Kharkiv in the northeast and Kherson in the south — and Ukrainian troops are fighting to hold all three. The Pentagon reported late Friday that the Russians did not appear to be in control of a single major population center. Significantly, a senior U.S. defense official said, Ukrainian command and control remains intact.

The Ukrainian government reported that hundreds of Russian soldiers had been killed in the war, along with scores of their own soldiers, while the Russian defense ministry issued a statement on Saturday morning that made no mention of any casualties or anything about the fight for Kyiv.

The Russian invasion started with targeted airstrikes before dawn on Thursday, but on the third day of the war, bloody battles were often being waged in close quarters. Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian news site, citing witnesses, reported combat 400 yards from Maidan Square in central Kyiv.

All Ukrainian men of fighting are being drafted into service, and tens of thousands are signing up. Ukrainians were asked to make Molotov cocktails. And there were tearful scenes at airports in western Ukraine as wives kissed their husbands goodbye before they headed to front.

The nation has rallied around its president, Mr. Zelensky, a former comedian.

To him and other officials, the objective of the Russian invasion of a neighboring country that possessed no military threat is to topple the government.

Mr. Zelensky has said that he is “target no. 1.”

As battles were waged around the city on Saturday morning, there were reports of clashes near the city’s train station and along a central thoroughfare, Bohdan Khmelnitsky Street, leading from Victory Square toward the city center, according to the witness accounts. Along that street, closer to the city center, bursts of gunfire could be heard through the night.

“We are stopping the horde, so far as we can,” the secretary of the Ukrainian Security and Defense Council, Oleksy Danilov, said around 7 a.m. “The situation is under control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and citizens of Kyiv.”

In dozens of interviews in the tense hours before the invasion and in the days after, Ukrainians struggled to understand how a country at peace so suddenly found itself at war. For many Ukrainians, the answer was found in Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.

This is Mr. Putin’s war. But what frightened people perhaps as much as the threat of missiles and bombs was that they did not know what he wanted.

The fear was evident in the drive from Kyiv to a small village outside the city. Military convoys had replaced families going on vacation or visiting friends. Where once Kyiv was known as a city where the music played a touch too loud in its cafes, the incessant wail of air raid sirens drowned out all joy.

The fear was evident in the faces of the people seeking safety in Western Ukraine, after they emerged from 20-hour train rides in packed carriages that were kept pitch-black to avoid being targeting by Russian rockets.

From Lviv in the west to Odessa in the south and Kharkiv and nearly all points in between, people huddled in air raid shelters and lined up and bank machines and stocked up on essentials.

While the Russians, for the moment, were not in control of any city, it was only the first phase of a conflict that could stretch into weeks or longer.

“The crisis in Ukraine gives North Korea more room for options, whether it’s a long-range missile test or even a nuclear test,” said Cheon Seong-whun, a former head of the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government-funded research institute in Seoul.

In South Korea, many people will see Washington’s response to Russia’s invasion as a test of its dependability as a military ally, said Lee Byong-chul, a professor of political science at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul.

He said a failure of American leadership could even increase public support for the idea of South Korea having its own nuclear weapons — an idea that the South’s government opposes, but which has gained popularity as the North has kept building its arsenal and China has become more assertive in the region.

“South Koreans saw the United States already looking something like a toothless tiger when it withdrew chaotically from Afghanistan,” Professor Lee said. “If it proves spineless in Ukraine, they will talk more about arming their country with nuclear weapons, because they wonder whether Ukraine would have suffered the humiliation it is suffering now had it not have given up its nuclear weapons.”

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gave up the Soviet nuclear weapons on its soil in exchange for security guarantees.

South Korean online chat rooms were abuzz with people discussing the Ukraine invasion’s implications for the divided Korean Peninsula. A weak American response would harden North Korea’s determination not to give up its nuclear arsenal, some people said.

The South Korean government has condemned the invasion and pledged to join international sanctions against Russia. As of Saturday, the North Korean government had not issued a statement about the invasion.

The landmarks include the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, the Kosciuszko Bridge, the Mid-Hudson Bridge and other structures and buildings throughout the state.

Landmarks have been similarly lit up in recent days across the world, including the Eiffel Tower, the London Eye, the Colosseum in Rome and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

Several cities across the United States, including Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Minneapolis and Kansas City, Mo., and Little Rock, Ark., have also joined the effort.

Some were skeptical of the displays, with one commenter tweeting about the Empire State Building, “This won’t help the good people of Ukraine. What will?”

Eleven member countries voted in favor of the resolution. China, India and the United Arab Emirates abstained. Russia, which has veto power as one of five permanent members of the council, voted against it.

“Russia, you can veto this resolution, but you cannot veto our voices,” said the U.S. ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “You cannot veto the truth. You cannot veto our principles. You cannot veto the Ukrainian people. You cannot veto the U.N. Charter. And you will not veto accountability.”

The United States had known all along that Russia would veto the resolution. But U.S. officials hoped that by doing so, Russia would demonstrate its isolation and its disregard for the U.N. charter.

Russia appeared unfazed. Its ambassador thanked the three countries that had abstained from the vote. He dismissed as a Western conspiracy the diplomatic efforts to hold it accountable. He denied that Russia had targeted civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and then delivered a jab at the United States for its own military incursions, inferring to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the premise that Saddam Hussein was harboring chemical weapons, which turned out to be not true.

“It is difficult for us to compete with the U.S. in terms of invasions,” said the Russian ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya. “You are in no position to moralize.”

Diplomats said that the U.N. General Assembly would act next week on a resolution condemning Russia’s war on Ukraine. Countries do not have veto power at the General Assembly, but its resolutions are symbolic and not legally binding, as the Security Council’s are.

The abstention by China was not a surprise. China has taken a both-sides approach to the conflict, calling for defusing of tensions and respect for sovereignty but stopping short of condemning Russia.

“Against the backdrop of five successive rounds of NATO expansion, Russia’s legitimate security aspiration should be given attention and addressed properly,” said China’s ambassador, Zhang Jun. “Ukraine should be a bridge between East and West, not an outpost for confrontation between major powers.”

But the abstentions by India and the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. ally in the Middle East, came as a surprise. Both countries said they had not voted in favor of the resolution because it might have closed the door for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.

Brazil voted in favor of the resolution and condemned Russia’s aggression. Its ambassador said the country had sought during last-minute negotiations to make changes to the text of the resolution to “balance” the language and leave space for diplomacy.

The council meeting ended with Ukraine’s ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, asking for a moment of silence to pray for peace and to honor those who had died or who might die.

“I invite the Russian ambassador to pray for salvation,” Mr. Kyslytsya said. A minute of silence followed and then loud applause.

Diplomats spoke to the news media after the meeting had ended. The European Union representative, Olof Skoog, said Russia’s veto was “another proof of Russia’s isolation and blatant disrespect for the world.”