'Does Putin Want To Kill Us All?' Kharkiv Civilians Under Siege As Russia Changes Tactics (rferl.org)
With Russian and Ukrainian forces engaged in tough fighting for control of major cities across Ukraine, Moscow has shifted its tactics to increasingly rely on rockets, artillery, and air attacks to hit civilian infrastructure.
For Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city located in the country's northeast, this has meant an increasingly indiscriminate campaign that has seen civilians caught in the shelling of their homes, as rockets and artillery have rained down on supermarkets, schools, hospitals, apartment blocks, and churches.
[...]
Taxi drivers in the city are unwilling to take people to the train station to leave the city out of fear of taking fire, she said, and trains out of Kharkiv are not operating on a set schedule, making it difficult to plan an escape from the besieged city.
"It's very scary to come to the station and not go anywhere because you [might] have to get back home [quickly] and there is shelling all the time," Evsa said. "What does [Russian President Vladimir] Putin want -- to kill us all? Destroy everything? I don't understand the purpose [of this war]."
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Ukrainian and Western forces say they believe Moscow is shifting tactics to a new strategy of pummeling civilian areas to try and demoralize Ukrainian resistance and reignite Russia's stagnant military advance. "Given the slowing down of the offensive and the resistance of the Ukrainians, Russia is changing its tactics," Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov
said in a March 5 statement.
Kharkiv's Freedom Square, the center of the city's public life, was hit by what Ukrainian officials say was a Russian cruise missile. Other cities in Ukraine's east are also the sites of intense fighting and are seeing their residential areas come under intense shelling as they are encircled by Russian forces.
The area near the regional administration building in Kharkiv, which city officials said was hit by a missile strike.
The square outside the headquarters of the Kharkiv administration after it was shelled on March 1.
In launching an invasion into Ukraine, the Kremlin has said its demands for ending the war consist of Ukraine recognizing the 2014 annexation by Russia of its Crimean Peninsula, declaring neutrality, demilitarizing, and the country undergoing "de-Nazification."
Putin has accused the Ukrainian government of being beholden to far-right, neo-Nazi elements -- despite President Volodymyr Zelenskiy being Jewish -- and has also cited alleged discrimination against Ukraine's Russian-speakers as one of his reasons for the conflict.
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"We are fighting against an enemy that is much stronger than us," Kuleba said. "But international law is on our side and hopefully it will make its own contribution to help us prevail. The question now is how the international community will respond."
️100,000 Ukrainians join Territorial Defense Forces. 
