Russian troops besiege Kiev, which prepares for a "fierce defense"

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  Lviv (Ukraine)

Updated Saturday, March 12, 2022-21:18

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Vladimir Putin is gradually tightening the grip of the Russian army around Kiev, already

and advancing, while the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, almost challenged him this Saturday in statements to various media: "He's going to have to raze Kiev and kill its inhabitants if he wants to take it. If that's his goal, let him come."

is gradually being installed ,

already in its eighteenth day and in a frankly negative spiral, according to the superiority of Russian means, with an army disproportionately larger than the ukrainian, does not end up translating into facts.

Thus, and with an increasingly close siege of the capital -this Saturday Russia destroyed the Valsylkiv airport, 40 kilometers away-, in addition to certain advances in the aggression in the south and east, but

: Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Schol, French Prime Minister and German Chancellor, respectively, spoke for 75 minutes with the Russian president and later conveyed that

This is how Russia bombs Ukrainian troops

The siege of Mariupol continues

Meanwhile, the Ukrainians of the east suffer a significant punishment - with a special mention for

, whose inhabitants have been

according to some testimonies -, and the concern begins to permeate those of the west, who begin to receive

sent from the nearby and pro-Kremlin Belarus: in Lviv, where people no longer even get up at night to hide when hearing anti-aircraft attack sirens, they scare the missiles that have already begun to fall on Lutsk (130 kilometers to the north, near Poland), and over Ivano-Frankivsk (about 100 to the south, near Moldova).

But everything seems to be at stake in

and doomed to a siege that could definitively entrench the conflict, given Russia's inability (or indecision) so far to define it, and counting on

screwed by the arms shipments from the international community, which the Kremlin described this Saturday as "legitimate objectives", giving them a role as unremarkable.

The siege of Kiev, thus, can be long and bloody, and just as the US president, Joseph Biden, played with the Russians by predicting the invasion, the same resource would now be used by the Ukrainian, Volodimir Zelensky, to prevent external observers. :

and a complete trap for Putin, who if he ever believed in recovering Ukraine for his Great Russia with a quick and aseptic "special operation", he is going to have to destroy a land that he considers his - that is, self-harm- to return it to its area of ​​influence and distance it from pro-Western democratic whims.

"If they want to carpet Kiev with bombs and just erase this region, the history of Kievan Rus', the history of Europe, let them do it, let them in," Zelensky said.

And Putin, indeed, seems to be following that path.

Thus, this Saturday the bombings on Irpin and Busha, suburbs to the northwest of the capital, intensified, and the Ukrainian Presidency adviser, Mikhailo Podolyak, admitted Russian advances also in the northwest.

"The city is besieged," he concluded.

However, he confirmed that "Kiev is a symbol of resistance"

Mariupol,

to the southeast, continues to be of great concern to international observers.

Doctors Without Borders assured that the city, of 445,000 inhabitants on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov, is

without water or electricity -like several towns and entire areas of the center and east of the country-, and with fights between the population to get food.

Zelensky assured that Russia is blocking the entry of supplies into Mariupol, which after 12 days of harsh siege has already become

Ukraine also denounced

in Krivoy Rog, Kremenchuk, Nikopol and Zaporizhia, as well as, according to AFP, a hospital in Mikolaiv, a city near the Black Sea, to the south, between Odessa, which also supports Russian aggression. , and Jersón, that already fell in the hands of the invader.

More than two million exiles

The human drama has no end for the moment in Ukraine, which according to the United Nations has already produced

all of them in the western area, which is beginning to feel the bombs, and

Of the latter, a million and a half have gone to neighboring Poland, which as a result of Putin's actions has gone from rejecting immigration as if it were a plague until months ago, to welcoming a million and a half neighbors with their arms open, as this newspaper has been able to verify, and to do it "with tenderness", as President Zelensky himself described this Saturday.

Putin, for his part, used his conversation with Macron and Scholz, who act as mediators on behalf of the geopolitically revived European Union, to denounce that

and "hostage-taking", and that it uses " as human shields," according to a Kremlin statement.

The battle of figures also continued its course.

have already died in the Russian invasion so far, that

have died so far in Mariupol ,

and that Ukrainian forces have already put 31 Russian tactical groups out of action, all without the verification of impartial observers. .

Ukraine, in short, continues to bleed to death.

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