Russia has been accused of intensifying its bombardment of the besieged Ukrainian city of Chernihiv and continuing to attack Kyiv despite claims the Kremlin would drawback out of respect for ongoing peace talks.
Vladyslav Atroshenko, Chernihiv’s mayor, said the Russians had lied and that they were continuing to heavily hit his city, which is less than 100 miles north of the country’s capital.
There was also continued barraging of Kyiv’s suburbs, Ukrainian officials said, said although Colonel Oleksandr Motyuzyanyk, a spokesman for the ministry of defence, said there was some signs of troop movements away from the two cities.
He said: “The general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces has been noticing some partial movement of certain units of the enemy from Kyiv and Chernihiv areas, at the same time there is no mass scale withdrawal from those areas.
“So at the moment it’s too early to say that it happens. The enemy has been withdrawing units which suffered the highest losses in order to replenish them. As far as we see the enemy has not abandoned its attempts to take or at least siege the capital city and Chernihiv”.
The Ukrainian military said Russian troops were also intensifying their attacks around the eastern city of Izyum and the eastern Donetsk region, after redeploying some units from other areas.
Russia’s deputy defence minister, Alexander Fomin, had claimed on Tuesday that Moscow wanted to “increase mutual trust, create the right conditions for future negotiations and reach the final aim of signing a peace deal with Ukraine”. He added during the talks in Istanbul that the Kremlin would “radically reduce military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv”.
Authorities in Chernihiv estimate that about 400 people have died since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February, with civilians living without electricity, gas or water.
On Wednesday morning, Atroshenko said: “The night was just as we expected, that [everything Russia promised] is a lie from the beginning till the end, that’s why at night we had some serious shelling at night. And the Russians were trying to destroy all possible means of crossing Desna River towards Kyiv.”
Atroshenko, who has called for Kyiv not to swap captured pilots who had operated above Chernihiv for Ukrainian prisoners of war, said there had been no evidence of any withdrawal over the last 24 hours from around his city.
He said: “The locals live in a real humanitarian crisis for weeks with no electricity, no heating, no water, only in some areas of the city there’s gas [natural gas, not petrol]. Thousands of buildings are destroyed. Yesterday, our district, Liotka, was shelled especially heavily, where a few people died and dozens were injured.
“Have you ever met liars in your life? What stands behind their lies? They are just liars. They lie all the time! [Sergei] Lavrov [the Russian foreign minister] lies that this is just an ‘operation’, Russian military lies when they say that this ‘operation’ is against the armed forces of Ukraine, and we say that they purposefully are destroying civilians, they are purposefully dropping bombs on civilians in broad daylight at low heights, they are bombing us with 120mm mines and you know this is not a precise weapons, it’s just bombing the entire city.”
Britain’s deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, said the claims from the Kremlin of a withdrawal had to be treated with caution. He said: “We judge the Russian military machine by its actions, not its words. There is obviously scepticism that it will regroup to attack again.
“The door to diplomacy will always be left ajar but I don’t think you can trust what is coming out of the mouth of [Vladimir] Putin’s war machine.”
Oleskandr Markushyn, mayor of Irpin, a commuter town a few miles from Kyiv that has been the focus of intense fighting, said the city was now “100% controlled by our military and territorial defence” but that Russian attacks continued and 50 Ukrainian soldiers had died in the battle.
He said: “We are constantly shelled from Bucha from Vorzel, from Grad, mortars, heavy artillery, and sometimes they shell from tanks and they shoot from rifles, but the whole perimeter of the city is controlled by our military and there are no Russian invaders in our city.
“There are still a lot of local people who didn’t want to leave the city - 30% of the total area was occupied.”
He added: “[The Russians] used tanks to roll over dead bodies of our Ukrainians. We will never forget that.
“Dead bodies were buried in backyards and I think about 200 to 300 people died. A lot of people are in the ruins. We need time to find the bodies. We see that 50% of the city has been destroyed, critical infrastructure has been destroyed.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials claimed that Russia was struggling to maintain fighting morale and that servicemen of Russia’s 26th Panzer Regiment of the 47th Panzer Division had been seeking to relocate out of the war.
It was further claimed that Russian units were being transferred from the occupied territories of Georgia to the territory of Ukraine in order to recruit for Russia. In the occupied eastern region of Luhansk, Russia was said to be preparing another wave of mobilisation from April 1 this year.