Mariupol/Lviv/Kyiv - Ukraine's military on Tuesday said residents should brace for more Russian shelling of critical infrastructure. U.S. President Joe Biden issued one of his sturdiest warnings, yet that Moscow is considering using chemical weapons.
Russia has been saying in recent weeks that Ukraine might possess chemical or biological weapons. Biden said those accusations were not merely false, but a sign that President Vladimir Putin might be planning to use such weapons himself.
Russian troops have failed to capture any major Ukrainian city more than four weeks into their invasion and are resorting to causing massive destruction to residential areas using air strikes, long-range missiles and artillery.
The southern port of Mariupol has become a focal point of Russia's assault and lies largely in ruins with bodies abandoned on the streets, but attacks were also reported to have intensified on the second city Kharkiv on Monday.
Explosions and bursts of gunfire shook Kyiv, and black smoke rose from a spot in the north. Increased artillery fire could be heard from the northwest, where Russia has sought to encircle and capture several suburban areas of the capital, a crucial target.
Early on Tuesday, Ukrainian troops forced Russian forces out of the Kyiv suburb of Makariv after a fierce battle, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said. The regained territory allowed Ukrainian forces to retake control of a key highway and block Russian troops from surrounding Kyiv from the northwest
The Defense Ministry said Russian forces battling toward Kyiv were able to partially take other northwest suburbs, Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, some of which had been under attack almost since Russia’s military invaded almost a month ago.
Ukraine's armed forces said in a statement issued on Tuesday that Russian forces were expected to continue to attack critical infrastructure using "high-precision weapons and indiscriminate munitions”.
Odessa hit
Authorities in Ukraine's Black Sea port city of Odessa have said residential areas were hit on Monday for the first time since the start of the war.
A Ukrainian member of parliament in Odessa, Oleksiy Honcharenko, tells the BBC he believes Russia is resorting to shelling in areas where its forces are unable to make progress on land.
Ukrainian service members patrol in front of the National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in downtown Odessa, Ukraine/Reuters
"We understand that clearly Odessa is a strategic aim of this war, but the Russian army can't go on land there, our army is holding ground, so [Putin] started - everywhere in Ukraine - bombardments, he's just hitting residential areas," he says.
"There are hundreds of international journalists in Kyiv, and some in Odessa, who saw that these attacks are in residential areas with no military targets."
Honcharenko says Odessa was bombed from the sea by the Russian Navy.
"They are planning a land operation against Odessa, we see their ships full of marines. I think the idea is to attack Odessa from several destinations."
He says, however, that Russian forces will suffer "heavy losses" if they attempt a land invasion there.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been addressing the Italian parliament by video link, in his latest address to national assemblies around the world.
-Reuters/AP/BBC