Nearly one month has passed since the biggest land invasion in Europe since World War II, and there have been no major breakthroughs on the battlefield or the negotiating table.
Russian forces appeared bogged down outside key cities in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance. Strikes on cities continued to wreak destruction across the country.
Ukraine’s capital Kyiv shook with Russian shelling that sparked fires in high-rise buildings on Wednesday, injuring four people.
In Kyiv’s suburbs, artillery fire thundered as Ukrainian forces fought tooth and nail to hold back the Russian invasion.
Here are some key things to know about the conflict:
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN AND AROUND THE CAPITAL?
The capital of Kyiv is still under fire. A barrage of shelling rocked the city on Wednesday, with rockets slamming into a shopping mall and high-rise buildings in the districts of Sviatoshynskyi and Shevchenkivskyi.
Destruction was extensive and fires from the shelling injured four residents, city officials said.
From a public park in Kyiv, mayor Vitali Klitschko said Russian bombardment had so far killed 264 civilians in the capital, including four children. As he spoke to reporters, explosions and loud gunfire echoed across the city.
Russian forces were bombing the ancient city of Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, the governor said Wednesday, destroying a bridge that had been critical for evacuations and aid deliveries. Chernihiv residents are without clean water and gas for cooking and heating, city officials said.
On the capital’s western outskirts, Ukrainian troops were trying to strike back at stalled Russian forces. Ukrainian forces managed on Tuesday to retake the suburban city of Makariv, allowing them to claw back a key highway and block Russian troops from surrounding Kyiv from the northwest.
Ukrainian forces also have wrested back areas to the northwest and the northeast of the city, including most of Irpin, the Kyiv mayor said, a city that has suffered some of the war’s heaviest bombardment.
Some 460 settlements in the surrounded Kyiv suburbs have been severed from the power grid, local officials said.
WHAT IS THE STATUS OF CITIES UNDER ATTACK?
Russian and Ukrainian forces continued battling fiercely on Wednesday for control of the town of Izium in eastern Ukraine, the president’s office said.
Russian warships are increasingly pounding the port city of Mariupol from the sea, Western officials assess. Controlling Mariupol would give Russia a coveted land corridor to Crimea, which Moscow annexed eight years ago.
The U.S. has calculated that Russia has lost more than 10% of its original combat capacity, including troops, tanks and other materiel. The Pentagon says Ukrainian forces have begun to go on the offensive in parts of the country, like the southern city of Kherson that was captured earlier in the war.
Britain’s defense ministry described the battle lines on Wednesday as largely “static,” with Russian forces trying to reorganize before resuming a large-scale assault.
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN MARIUPOL?
Mariupol, a strategic port city on the Sea of Azov, has become a vivid symbol of the war’s savage destruction.
Some 100,000 people remain trapped inside the city, Ukraine’s president says, struggling to survive without heat, food or clean water and subject to relentless Russian bombardment from the sea and skies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 7,000 people managed to escape in the latest evacuation on Tuesday. He also accused the Russians of seizing a humanitarian convoy trying to get desperately needed food and other supplies into the city, and of taking the drivers captive.
Russian missiles have crashed into civilian buildings — including a school and a theater known to be sheltering hundreds of people underground.
In the words of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, it’s a “living hell.”
In the latest from Zelenskyy, it’s “inhumane.”
In the eyes of Viktoria Totsen, 39, who arrived in a Polish border town Tuesday after fleeing the city, it’s “99% destroyed.”
WHAT HAS THE AP DIRECTLY WITNESSED OR CONFIRMED?
More than 3.5 million people have fled the war in Ukraine, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
Ukrainians who escaped pitched battles spoke to The Associated Press in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where thousands were arriving and thousands more were leaving to join a mass exodus into Poland and other nations.
Julia Krytskaa choked back tears at the Lviv train station while describing what she fled in Mariupol.
“There is no one you can ask for help,” she said.
In the Ukrainian seaside city of Odesa, fondly known as the Pearl of the Black Sea, street musicians played under cloudless skies as people fled.
Odesa has so far been spared the worst of Russia’s onslaughts, but a major attack on Ukraine’s biggest port city seems inevitable. Anxiety is growing. The streets are stacked with sandbags and barricades. Tearful families waved goodbye to loved ones at the train station.
“I can’t understand what has happened,” Igor Topsi, a musician, told the AP.
Meanwhile, in Lviv, a Ukrainian craze for gun purchases and training was evident on Wednesday.
“Everything’s a best-seller these days,” said Zakhar Sluzhalyy, a gun shop owner who has seen his stock rapidly dwindle since the war began.
Many Ukrainians have abandoned their day jobs to join the fight against the global superpower. Sluzhalyy said his new customers are picking up arms for self-defense.
“The war’s on our territory. We’re defending our land,” he said.
HOW IS THE WORLD RESPONDING TO THE WAR?
President Biden headed to Brussels on Wednesday for talks with key allies, an effort to try to halt the war’s tailspin into an even greater catastrophe.
As he departed Washington, he described the possibility that Russia could use chemical weapons in Ukraine as a “real threat.” It’s an issue world leaders will discuss at the NATO summit, he added.
Biden is expected to roll out new sanctions on Russia and coordinate more military assistance for Ukraine. He’s also working on long-term efforts to boost defenses in Eastern Europe and wean the continent off Russian oil and gas, the White House said. He will travel to Poland later in the week.
From the Vatican, Pope Francis again prayed for peace in Ukraine. He added a personal note this time to explain his aversion to conflict, citing his grandfather, a World War I veteran, who taught him to hate war in all its forms.
International investigations of possible war crimes and other violations in the war are underway. The Swiss attorney general’s office says it has started collecting evidence from Ukrainian refugees in an effort to expose potential crimes and breaches of sanctions stemming from the conflict.
The United Nations on Wednesday will face three resolutions on the spiraling humanitarian situation in Ukraine — each one hinting at bitter political divisions within the world body. One resolution supported by Ukraine and the West holds Russia responsible for the humanitarian crisis. A Russian Security Council resolution on the war makes no mention of its invasion.
Security services in Poland said they were seeking to expel 45 Russian secret service officers and their associates who had previously enjoyed diplomatic status in the country.
Russian ally Belarus, for its part, said it was ejecting Ukrainian diplomats and closing a consulate.
In the latest stop of his global tour via video conference, Zelenskyy delivered an emotional speech to the Japanese parliament. He implored lawmakers to help Ukraine defend itself and impose more sanctions on Russia.
“Our people cannot even adequately bury their murdered relatives, friends, and neighbors,” he said.
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