Russian retreat reveals destruction as Ukraine asks for help

Russian troops left behind crushed buildings, streets littered with destroyed cars and residents in dire need of food and other aid in a northern Ukrainian city, giving fuel to Kyiv's calls Thursday for more Western support to help halt Moscow's offensive before it refocuses on the country's east.

Dozens of people lined up to receive loaves of bread, diapers and medicine from vans parked outside a shattered school now serving as an aid-distribution point in Chernihiv, which Russian forces besieged for weeks as part of their attempt to sweep south towards the capital before retreating.

The city's streets are lined with shelled homes and apartment buildings, missing roofs or walls, and a chalk message on the blackboard in one classroom still reads: Wednesday the 23rd of February - class work.

 

Russia invaded the next day, launching a war that has seen more than 4 million Ukrainians flee the country, displaced millions more within it, and sent shockwaves through Europe and beyond.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned Thursday that despite a recent Russian pullback, the country remains vulnerable, pleading for weapons, weapons and weapons from NATO to face down the coming offensive in the east.

Nations from the western alliance agreed to increase their supply of arms, spurred on by reports of atrocities by Russian forces in areas surrounding the capital, Kyiv.

Western allies also ramped up financial penalties aimed at Moscow, including a ban by the European Union on Russian coal imports and a U.S. move to suspend normal trade relations with Russia.

Kuleba encouraged Western countries to continue bearing down on Russia, suggesting that any let up will ultimately result in more suffering for Ukrainians.

How many Buchas have to take place for you to impose sanctions?" Kuleba asked reporters, referring to a town near Kyiv where Associated Press journalists counted dozens of bodies, some burned, others apparently shot at close range or with their hands bound.

"How many children, women, men, have to die - innocent lives have to be lost - for you to understand that you cannot allow sanctions fatigue, as we cannot allow fighting fatigue? Ukrainian officials said earlier this week that the bodies of 410 civilians were found in towns around the capital city.

Volunteers have spent days collecting the corpses, and more were picked up in Bucha on Thursday.

Ukrainian and several Western leaders have blamed the massacres on Moscow's troops, and the weekly Der Spiegel reported Thursday that Germany's foreign intelligence agency had intercepted radio messages between Russian soldiers discussing the killings of civilians.

Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.

Kuleba became emotional while referring to the horrors in the town, telling reporters that they couldn't understand how it feels after seeing pictures from Bucha, talking to people who escaped, knowing that the person you know was raped four days in a row.

His comments came in response to a reporter's question about a video allegedly showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting a captured and wounded Russian soldier. He said he had not seen the video but that it would be investigated and acknowledged that there could be isolated incidents of violations.

The video has not been independently verified by the AP.

In the 6-week-old war, President Vladimir Putin's forces have failed to take Ukraine's capital quickly and achieve what Western countries said was the Russian leader's initial aim of ousting the Ukrainian government. In the wake of that setback and heavy losses, Russia shifted its focus to the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region in eastern Ukraine where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years.

The United Nations' humanitarian chief told the AP on Thursday that he's not optimistic about securing a cease-fire after meeting with officials in Kyiv and in Moscow this week, underlining the lack of trust the two sides have for one another.

He spoke hours after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukraine of backtracking on proposals it had made over Crimea and Ukraine's military status.

It's not clear how long it will take withdrawing Russian forces to redeploy, and Ukrainian officials have urged people in the country's east to leave before the fighting intensifies there.

The head of Ukraine's national railway system said Russian shelling already blocked the evacuation of residents from some eastern areas by train.

The situation in Donbas is heating up and we understand that April will be quite hot, so those who have the opportunity to leave - women, children, the elderly - need to stay in a safe place, Borys Filatov, the mayor of Dnipro, a city that lies just west of the Donbas, said at a briefing.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukrainian and Russian officials agreed to establish civilian evacuation routes Thursday from several areas in the Donbas.

Even as Ukraine braced for a new phase of the war, Russia's withdrawal brought some relief to Chernihiv, which lies near Ukraine's northern border with Belarus and was cut off for weeks.

But the departed troops left behind twisted buildings and traumatized residents, who clambered over rubble and passed cars destroyed by the fighting.