Russian Strike Reduces Kyiv Mall to Ruins

President Volodymyr Zelensky, addressing the nation overnight, said that a relief convoy in northeastern Ukraine near the city of Kharkiv had been hijacked by Russian forces. And efforts to reach hundreds of thousands of people trapped in Mariupol remained fraught with danger.

“The enemy desperately does not want civilians to break through,” Olena Zelenska, the president’s wife, said in a statement. “But they will. Please hold on, dear people, I beg you. I will repeat my husband’s words, ‘Ukraine doesn’t abandon her people.’”

Ukrainian forces were making progress in pushing the Russians out from southern areas in the Kherson region as they pressed to retake the airport, according to the Ukrainian military. In places where Russia does have control, Ukrainian officials and witnesses said they were not only forcibly deporting people, but conscripting men to fight in their war effort.

In other major developments:

• President Biden is making his biggest diplomatic push of the war. On Monday, he will speak to his counterparts from France, Germany, Italy and Britain. He will travel to Brussels on Wednesday to meet with NATO and European leaders, then head to Poland on Friday.

• The United States has said it opposes Poland’s proposal for a NATO peacekeeping mission.

• The deputy commander of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, Andrei Paliy, died in combat in Mariupol, according to the governor of Sevastopol, the Crimean city where the fleet is based. Paliy is one of several high-ranking Russian officers who have been killed in action in Ukraine.

• President Zelensky called for renewed peace talks with Russia, despite few signs of progress after four days of negotiations last week.

“Five drivers and one doctor. We will release them,” he said. The claim could not be independently verified, but Russian soldiers have been targeting civilians.

“We will try again and again to deliver to our people what they need,” Mr. Zelensky said.

On Sunday, 7,295 people were evacuated through four humanitarian corridors in the east and south, he said. That includes some 4,000 residents of the embattled southern port city of Mariupol who made it to safety.

But hundreds of thousands remain trapped in Mariupol and Mr. Zelensky said the authorities would try once agin on Monday to reach as many people there as they could.

Human Rights Watch on Monday called on Russian forces to ensure that civilians in Mariupol and other cities are not being denied access to their most basic needs.

“Mariupol residents have described a freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings,” Belkis Wille, senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “And these are the lucky ones who were able to escape, leaving behind thousands who are cut off from the world in the besieged city.”

Aid groups raised similar concerns about other parts of Ukraine, as well.

Birgitte Bischoff Ebbesen, the regional European director for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said that vital supplies are needed “to avert an even greater humanitarian catastrophe,” across the country.

Many of the people in most dire need were already vulnerable before the conflict.

“They face an even harsher situation as they are losing their homes and their livelihoods, being forced to seek shelter wherever they can or fleeing their country in search of safety,” she said in a statement.

On Monday, roughly eight hours after the strike, firefighters were still battling pockets of flames while soldiers and emergency crews searched the rubble for any survivors or casualties. By 8 a.m. local time, the rescuers had pulled out six bodies and covered them with plastic, and they held out little hope for finding survivors. A soldier at the scene said body parts littered the wreckage.

In the mall itself, burst pipes sent water cascading through a mess of tangled metal and concrete. An office building next door was still standing, but all of its windows were blown out and a fire was burning inside at dawn.

There was no visible evidence of any military vehicles or hardware at the devastated site. All of Kyiv, however, is involved in the defense of the capital, a once-thriving metropolis turned into a fortress.

While Kyiv has been under bombardment for weeks, the scope of the devastation around the mall was greater than anything The New York Times has witnessed inside the city limits.

Ukrainian armed forces have waged ferocious battles in the cities around Kyiv and have managed to push Russian forces back in places. The British defense intelligence agency said on Monday that the bulk of those forces were more than 15 miles from the center and that taking Kyiv remained “Russia’s primary military objective.”

With the city seemingly out of artillery range, Russia has turned to rockets and bombs, often targeting civilian infrastructure and neighborhoods.

The Retroville mall hosted a multiplex movie theater, a fitness club and fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and KFC as well as a whole gallery dedicated to sporting goods, among other stores.

On the first day of the war in Ukraine, its managers announced a temporary closure on Facebook and offered information on the nearest shelters.

“We believe in our army and peaceful sky,” they said in the post. To date, it was their last.

It started informally, with word of its existence spreading in rushed phone calls and frenzied text messages. As the war expanded, so did word of Wild House, now part of an elaborate volunteer network dealing with a never ending stream of need.

Nadiya Opryshko, 29, an aspiring journalist turned humanitarian, is the driving force behind its transformation.

“The military of Russia, they are fighting for nothing,” she said in an interview. “They did not know and cannot understand what they are fighting for.

“Ukrainian people, we know what we are fighting for,” she continued. “We are fighting for peace. We are fighting for our country. And we are fighting for freedom.”

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Her story, and that of Wild House, in many ways mirror the broader transformation that her city and her nation have undergone in only a few weeks of war.

The signs of change are visible everywhere, at once strange but also oddly familiar, former rituals playing out in a radically altered context.

A family stands on a corner with their suitcases near a French cafe, as the voice of Edith Piaf wafts in the background. But they are not tourists. In their suitcases are lifetimes condensed, whatever time and space would allow as they ran.

Two people share coffee at Black Honey. Not old friends, but a soldier of fortune and an Australian journalist. The hotels are all full, but the travelers are not tourists drawn to the city’s magnificent architecture, but relief workers, diplomats, journalists, spies and an assortment of other people whose pursuits are harder to divine.

And, always, there are the air raid sirens, wailing reminders of the destruction raining on cities across the country that, with the horrific strike last week on a military base just outside of town and another attack on Friday near the airport, are drawing ever closer to the city itself.

But every day that Ukrainian forces around the capital, Kyiv, and other cities fight off the Russian onslaught is another day for Lviv to harden its defenses. Artwork is now stowed in bunkers. Four limestone statues in Rynok Square, meant as an allegory for the Earth, are now wrapped in foam and plastic, turning Neptune into a silhouette with only his trident identifiable. The stained-glass windows of the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, founded in 1360, are covered in metal to protect them from Russian rockets.

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The majority of the three million people who have fled Ukraine have passed through Lviv’s train and bus stations. And for millions more internally displaced people, Lviv is the gateway to safety, however fleeting, in the west. The city is overstuffed with people and emotion. Energy and despair. Anger and determination.

The morning after the first air raid siren sounded before dawn on Feb. 24, however, there was mostly uncertainty. People emerged bleary eyed and unsure, lining up at bank machines and stores, rushing to collect valuables and making plans to wait out the storm.

Most of the shops closed, taxis stopped working and seemingly everyone went on Telegram to watch videos — some real, some fake — of Russian fighter jets roaring over cities and Russian missiles crashing into buildings.

The hotels emptied as people rushed to join loved ones in Ukraine and outside the country.

“They are afraid for their families, afraid for their friends,” Denys Derchachev, 36, a doorman at the Citadel Inn, said on the first morning of the war.

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Christina Kornienko was in line to collect her valuables from a safe deposit box. But even in the shock of the moment, she had an idea of what would happen next. “The women will go to Poland and the men will fight,” she said.

She was right. Shock quickly turned to anger, which fueled a remarkable sense of solidarity.

Less than a month ago, Arsan, 35, was the owner of a local coffee shop. He was about to go to the gym when his wife told him the country was at war. Four days later, he was learning how to make firebombs and spot the fluorescent markers placed by Russian saboteurs on buildings to direct missile strikes.

“We can learn to shoot because we don’t know how this situation will develop,” he said. He said he was scared of what “crazy people may do,” particularly President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, with his talk about nuclear weapons, but Arsan was confident in the army.

“The Ukrainian army is doing a great job,” he said. “They are super people.”

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A month ago, Arsan’s confidence could easily have been dismissed as bravado. Few military analysts gave the Ukrainian army much of a chance against what was assumed to be the Russian army’s superior firepower and professionalism. But with each passing day — as Ukrainian forces defend Kyiv, hang on with grim determination in Mariupol and mount a spirited campaign to keep Russian forces from advancing on Odessa — the nation’s belief in itself appears to deepen.

Periodically, the Ukrainian military makes expansive claims, impossible to verify, about its achievements on the battlefield. This month, for example, it said that since the start of the war, its forces had killed 13,500 Russian soldiers and destroyed 404 tanks, 81 planes, 95 helicopters and more than 1,200 armored personnel carriers.

These numbers, that Western analysts say are almost certainly inflated, are cited by President Volodymyr Zelensky in his daily talks to the nation — once, twice, sometimes three or four times a day, as he channels the nation’s anger and tries to lift its spirits.

It is a routine he has managed to keep up for weeks, often bringing Ukrainians to tears while inspiring a resistance born of baristas, computer programmers, accountants and lawyers.

But an army, as Napoleon once said, moves on its stomach, even a civilian one. And the effort to supply the nation’s ever growing cadre of citizen-warriors, like so many aspects of the nation’s defense, started with volunteers.

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Hundreds of them assemble daily at the Lviv Palace of Arts, fighting the war by packing jars of pickled preserves, mountains of donated clothes, gallons of water and trash bags stuffed with toiletries.

“We began immediately after the bombardment started,” said Yuri Viznyak, the artistic director of the center, who now finds himself leading a critical hub in the war effort. And with Russians increasingly targeting civilians, much of his work is now devoted to getting relief to people in dire need.

But as soldiers, weapons and humanitarian aid move from Lviv to the eastern front, a tide of humanity continues to move in the other direction. With each day, the stories they carry to Lviv grow more dire.

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Matukhno Vitaliy, 23, is from the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine and the city of Lysychansk, near the Russian border. It took him two days and nights to reach Lviv in a crowded evacuation train.

He said his parents were still in the city, with no running water because all the pipes had been destroyed. It had 100,000 inhabitants before the war, but there is no telling how many have fled and how many have died.

“Everything is destroyed,” he said.

Mariupol. Kharkiv. Chernihiv. Sumy. Okhtyrka. Hostomel. Irpin. The list of Ukrainian cities turned to ruins keeps growing. While the Russian advance may have slowed, the destruction has not.

Any illusions people in Lviv might have had that their city might be spared have long faded. So grandmothers join grandchildren stringing fabric together to make camouflage nets. Villagers on the outskirts of the city dig trenches and erect barricades. Movie streaming sites feature videos on how to make firebombs.

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Yet, in contrast to the first days of the war, the city is humming with life. Stores have reopened and street musicians are performing. Alcohol is banned, but bars are full. A 7 p.m. curfew means finding a table for the compressed dinner hours is a challenge.

But the posters around town that once advertised local businesses have been replaced by war propaganda. Many take aim at Mr. Putin, focusing on a crude remark he made about Mr. Zelensky.

“Like it or not, beauty, you have to put up with it,” Mr. Putin said, using an expression that rhymes in Russian. Ukrainians believe he was making a reference to rape — a prelude to what they say is the rape of a nation.

One of the most popular posters features a woman looming over Mr. Putin. Jabbing a gun into his mouth, she says, “I am not your beauty.”

The strike had echoes of an attack in the same city last week on a theater where hundreds of people were sheltering, with the word “children” written in huge letters on the ground outside as a warning against airstrikes. It was reduced to rubble.

More than 7,000 people were evacuated through humanitarian corridors on Sunday, Mr. Zelensky said, though only four of the humanitarian corridors set up to allow for escape had remained open.

On Monday, more buses will be sent to Mariupol to continue evacuations. But elsewhere in the country, he said, Russian forces had targeted humanitarian efforts intended to spare civilians from the worst effects of their sieges.

He accused Russian troops of capturing a convoy delivering humanitarian supplies to the town of Vovchansk, which is on a route from Russia into Kharkiv, a major city where Russian forces have laid siege since the start of the war, destroying civilian infrastructure.

“There is no connection now with six people, five drivers and one doctor,” Mr. Zelensky said of the convoy. “We will release them. We will try again and again to deliver to our people what they need.”

Mr. Zelensky applauded resistance in Kherson, a Black Sea port that is the most important city so far claimed by Russian forces, saying he was grateful to the military and ordinary civilians there for keeping Russia from taking full control.

In a message directed at the Russian side, he said the Russian military was struggling to get home, adding, “That is why our soldiers help them with the path to God’s judgment.”

What they would find in hell, he said, would be much like the besieged cities of Ukraine: “I am sure they receive only one punishment, one for all: the eternal cellar. Forever under the bombs. Forever without food, water and heat. For everything they did to our people, ordinary Ukrainians.”

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One of the most potentially divisive issues at the NATO meeting will be a proposal from Poland to organize an international peacekeeping mission for Ukraine. While NATO has carried out such missions in Europe before, those were done after fighting eased.

While the United States provides weapons to Ukraine, Mr. Biden has resisted calls to support a no-fly zone over the country, fearing it could draw the United States closer to a direct confrontation with Russia. NATO and American officials have also said there are no plans to send troops to Ukraine.

Later Thursday, Mr. Biden will join a European Council summit and a G7 meeting called by Germany to discuss imposing more sanctions against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. They will also discuss how to help the more than three million people who have fled Ukraine.

On Friday, he will visit Poland, a NATO member that borders Ukraine and is the main destination for refugees. He is scheduled to discuss the humanitarian crisis caused by the war with President Andrzej Duda of Poland. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said there are no plans for Mr. Biden to travel to Ukraine during the trip.

“The trip will be focused on continuing to rally the world in support of the Ukrainian people and against President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” she wrote on Twitter.

Mr. Biden’s travels follow repeated talks between Russia and Ukraine, including a meeting between foreign ministers of the two countries in Turkey earlier this month. While those negotiations have made no clear progress, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, said Sunday that the two sides were close to an agreement, and he was hopeful about the chances of a cease-fire.

American officials have questioned whether Russia has been a sincere participant in the talks and downplayed the possibility of a deal.

“The negotiations seem to be one-sided, and the Russians have not leaned into any possibility for a negotiated and diplomatic solution,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told CNN on Sunday.

“I think that it is necessary to have a peace mission — NATO, possibly some wider international structure — but a mission that will be able to defend itself, which will operate on Ukrainian territory,” Mr. Kaczynski said at a news conference in Kyiv.

So far, NATO has maintained that it will not send troops to Ukraine in fear that it may escalate tensions and be interpreted as an act of war against Russia.

“I can’t preview what decisions will be made at this NATO conference and how NATO will respond to the Polish proposal. What I can say is American troops will not be on the ground in Ukraine at this moment,” the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told CNN on Sunday.

During a news conference on Thursday, Piotr Müller, a Polish government spokesman, made it clear that Poland is not advocating “getting into direct conflict with Russia.” The proposed peacekeeping mission would only be stationed in the parts of Ukraine which are not occupied by Russia, “to send a clear signal that war crimes will not be accepted” Mr. Müller explained.

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, said during a news conference on Wednesday that while the alliance “supports peace efforts” and “calls on Russia and President Putin to withdraw its forces,” it has “no plans of deploying NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine.”

NATO has deployed peacekeeping missions to conflict-stricken countries in the past, such as Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the role of the troops was to ensure public safety and support international humanitarian efforts. However, these missions were usually launched after the end of military conflicts, and not while they were still in place.