Russia corners the Ukrainian government and Zelensky asks the population to resist

Ukraine faces a difficult night. In Kiev, with the darkness, detonations have been heard again. The Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, has addressed the nation with a pessimistic message: “Tonight will be the hardest. We must resist”, he has said in a video. “Many cities in our country are under attack: Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, our boys and girls from Donbas, the cities of the south, Kiev…”, he listed. “Tonight the enemy will use all available means to break our resistance, we cannot lose the capital”, he insisted and has asked the population to resist. “The fate of Ukraine is being decided right now.”

Aware that the attacks and the advance of the Kremlin troops continue to increase, the central bank of Ukraine has opened an account to obtain funds to support the Army while weapons are distributed among reservists. The fighting came this Friday near the center of Kiev. Meanwhile, the explosions and the alert in the form of a siren do not stop. Police controls are also extended in different communication channels, as confirmed by EL PAÍS coinciding with the arrival of the night when thousands of people were already taking refuge in the subway tunnels and the curfew that prevails from ten until seven in the morning.

Zelenski refuses to withdraw from power in the face of Russian aggression, which this Friday reaches its third day. Hours before the video in which he predicts a complex night, he appeared in another recording surrounded by his closest team. He assured that he keeps the reins of the country. The president tries with that message to maintain morale that has been going down as the hours go by. At street level, there is not much doubt that the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is pursuing the goal of unseating the current government and imposing a pro-Russian one. The European Union and the United Kingdom have announced that they will try to block the assets of both President Putin and his Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov.

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Kiev try to survive beyond the diplomatic tensions and the design of the sanctions destined to harm Russia. For them, what matters, essentially, is their security, which is measured by the fall of projectiles from the air on areas inhabited by civilians and the tightening of the siege on the capital carried out by the Kremlin troops on the ground.

What will be next? Many neighbors ask themselves before an almost impossible mystery to clear not only in the capital but also in the rest of the cities of the country. This Friday, EL PAÍS witnessed the withdrawal of the Ukrainian troops on one of the bridges that give access to the center of Kiev amid fire from both sides.

Tens of thousands of citizens have escaped in recent hours despite the fact that Zelenski also affirms in the video that the inhabitants remain in these difficult times in Ukraine. Most of those fleeing are women and children. Their usual route is to the west of the country, from where many make the leap to Poland, Romania, Slovakia or Hungary.

On the night of this Friday, while more and more people were accumulating in the bomb shelters, there were roadblocks scattered along different communication routes in Kiev, which has about three million inhabitants. Some Ukrainian military vehicles circulated along the avenues. All this happens in a city under a curfew, but even in the middle of the day it does not recover some normal activity: the shops are closed; education is, suspended and traffic has almost disappeared.

 

Meanwhile, Putin had called on the Ukrainian military to stage a coup. “Take the power in your hands. It will be easier for us to come to terms with you than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis who occupied Kiev and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage,” the president said during a meeting of his Security Council. Despite his calls, the Ukrainian Army was reluctant to surrender despite its overwhelming inferiority to the invader.

Kiev proposed to Moscow to negotiate its neutrality status in exchange for peace. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, confirmed that the president is willing to speak with the Ukrainian authorities in Minsk. But nothing indicates that the Russians offered a truce. Hours earlier, Lavrov had stressed that Zelensky had already lost “his chance at him.” The negotiations, the minister warned, would only resume “after the restoration of democratic order.” This means, translated from the language of the Kremlin, that they will only agree with a new government, more likely to say yes to Moscow’s claims. Putin warned that if there were more civilian casualties, it would be the Ukrainians’ fault alone. Hours later, Zelensky’s spokesman, Sergii Nykyforov,