Moscow on Friday accused Kyiv of carrying out its first air strike on Russian soil, further dashing hopes of any deescalation in President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.
Peace talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials resumed via video, but Moscow warned that the helicopter attack on a fuel depot in the town of Belgorod would hamper negotiations.
After over a month of a military campaign that has reduced parts of Ukraine to rubble, Moscow said in peace talks earlier this week it would scale back attacks on the capital Kyiv and the city of Chernigiv.
But Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia was consolidating and preparing “powerful strikes” in the country’s east and south, joining a chorus of Western assessments that Moscow troops were regrouping.
“This is part of their tactics,” said Zelensky in a late-night address.
“We know that they are moving away from the areas where we are beating them to focus on others that are very important… where it can be difficult for us,” he said.
In particular, he warned, the situation in the country’s south and east was “very difficult.”
“In Donbas and Mariupol, in the Kharkiv direction, the Russian army is accumulating the potential for attacks, powerful attacks,” he said.
Washington echoed that assessment, with a senior US defense official saying Russia’s focus on Donbas could herald a “longer, more prolonged conflict.”
Fears grew that the theater of war may yet grow, as Russia for the first time on Friday accused Ukraine of an air strike with helicopters hitting Rosneft’s fuel storage facility in the western town of Belgorod, around 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the border with Ukraine.
“There was a fire at the petrol depot because of an air strike carried out by two Ukrainian army helicopters, which entered Russian territory at a low altitude,” Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on messaging app Telegram.
The consequence of the accusation was swiftly made clear by the Kremlin.
“Of course, this is not something that can be perceived as creating comfortable conditions for the continuation of negotiations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, referring to ongoing peace talks.
Russia launched its offensive on February 24 on its neighbour, expecting to quickly take Kyiv and topple Zelensky’s government.
But a ferocious Ukrainian fightback and logistics and tactical problems scuppered such plans. Meanwhile, Russia has faced unprecedented Western sanctions that have led multinationals to quit the country en masse.
The number of Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia’s war in their country has crossed 4.1 million, the United Nations said Friday, adding: “This tragedy must stop.”
The flow of people escaping across the western borders to flee the Russian assault has settled at around 40,000 a day over the past week.
UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said 4,102,876 Ukrainians had fled the country since the February 24 invasion – a figure up 43,771 on Thursday’s numbers.
More than 3.4 million fled in March.
“Forced to run for their lives. Forced to leave their homes. Forced to be apart from family. This tragedy must stop,” UNHCR said.
Women and children account for 90 percent of those who have fled. Half of those are children. Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are eligible for military call-up and cannot leave.
UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, says more than half of the country’s estimated 7.5 million children have been displaced – 2.5 million internally and two million abroad.