Ukraine war: 4 die in overnight shelling in Kyiv; Biden to visit Poland as Putin changes war tactics

Shelling in a Kyiv neighbourhood has devastated a shopping centre, leaving a flattened ruin still smoldering on Monday morning in the midst of high-rise towers.

Emergency services reported at least four people were killed by the overnight shelling near the city centre late Sunday.

The force of the explosion shattered every window in the high-rise next door and twisted their metal frames.

In the distance, the sound of artillery rang out as firefighters picked their way through the destruction in the densely populated Podil district.

Emergency officials have contained an ammonia leak at a chemical plant that contaminated wide area in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, officials said on Monday.

Sumy regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyy didn't say what caused the leak, which spread about 2.5 km (1.5 miles) in all directions from the Sumykhimprom plant.

The plant is on the eastern outskirts of the city, which has a population of about 263,000 and has been regularly shelled by Russian troops in recent weeks

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has added a stop in Poland to his trip this week to Europe for urgent talks with NATO and European allies, as Russian forces concentrate their fire upon cities and trapped civilians in a nearly month-old invasion of Ukraine.


Biden will first travel to Brussels and then to Poland to meet with leaders there, press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Sunday night. Poland is a crucial ally in the Ukraine crisis.

It is hosting thousands of American troops and is taking in more people fleeing the war in Ukraine more than 2 million than any other nation in the midst of the largest European refugee crisis in decades.

Biden will head to Warsaw for a bilateral meeting with President Andrzej Duda scheduled for Saturday.

Biden will discuss how the US, along with its allies and partners, is responding to the humanitarian and human rights crisis that Russia's unjustified and unprovoked war on Ukraine has created, Psaki said.

On Monday ahead of his trip, Biden will discuss the war with European leaders.

President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom are expected to take part, the White House said Sunday.

White House officials have said Biden has no plans to travel to Ukraine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, while in Poland this month, briefly crossed into neighbouring Ukraine in a show of solidarity alongside that country's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba.

Poland has been one of the most vocal countries in asking fellow NATO members to consider getting more involved to rein in the bloodshed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine largely has united the US and NATO and European allies, as well as allies in Asia and elsewhere.

The United States and European governments see Moscow's military aggression as a threat to their security and strategic interests.

Biden and NATO have said repeatedly that while the US and NATO will provide weapons and other defensive support to non-NATO member Ukraine, they are determined to avoid any escalation on behalf of Kyiv that risks a broader war with Russia.

The Pentagon on March 9 rejected a Polish proposal for providing Ukraine with MiG fighter jets via a NATO air base, saying allied efforts against the Russian invasion should focus on more useful weaponry and that the MiG transfer with a US and NATO connection would run a high risk of escalating the war.

Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has pleaded for the US to provide his military with more aircraft and advanced air-defense systems.

NATO and the United States have rejected his appeals to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine to suppress Russian air power, saying it would put Western forces in direct conflict with Russian ones.

Determined resistance by Ukrainian fighters when Russian tanks and troops rolled into Ukraine in late February quickly defeated Russian forces' attempts to storm Ukraine's capital and unseat the westward-looking government.

Denied an easy and early victory, Russia's military is reverting to the scorched earth tactics of its past offensives in Syria and Chechnya, and pounding population centres with airstrikes and artillery barrages that leave civilians like those in the port city of Mariupol able to safely venture out for food or water, to bury the dead, or to flee.

After Biden rallied European allies to join in sweeping sanctions against Russia over the invasion at the outset, his tasks now include dealing with some NATO members that are pushing for more involvement directly in the fighting. That includes proposals by Poland for peacekeepers.

Biden's trip includes a summit Thursday of NATO leaders, who will use the meeting to look at strengthening the bloc's own deterrence and defense, immediately and in the long term, to deal with the now openly confrontational Putin.

That gathering is intended not just to show NATO's support to Ukraine, but also our readiness to protect and defend all NATO allies, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday.

And by sending that message, we are preventing an escalation of the conflict to a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia, Stoltenberg said.

Front-line NATO members on the alliance's eastern flank are also asking for advanced US and British air defense systems to guard against the kind of missile and air assaults Russia is unleashing on Ukraine.

We have to strengthen our eastern flank of NATO. We have been talking about this for years, but now it's time for action,? Estonia's prime minister, Kaja Kallas, told CNN's State of the Union.

She added: We need some more capabilities to support ourselves and defend ourselves by air defense systems, what is definitely necessary here, but also the troops that are present that act as a deterrent also to the Russian military.

Noting that Russia is firing missiles from such a long range that they can also reach Paris from where they are shooting right now, Kallas said

European leaders must understand that this defense is our common issue, and it's not a theoretical discussion, but issue in real life.

Biden also will participate in a European Council summit to discuss the allies' sanctions on Russia and humanitarian efforts for the millions of Ukraine's people displaced by Russia's attacks, Psaki said last week.

His agenda includes a meeting of leaders of the the Group of Seven countries to discuss the punishing financial and economic penalties that the West and its allies have levelled on Russia over its invasion, Psaki said.

After failing to capture Kiev, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been forced to change his war tactics in Ukraine and is moving to a strategy of "protecting key territorial goals".

This was reported by The Wall Street Journal citing unnamed high-ranking US officials, said UNIAN.

One of the interlocutors said that, given the data received, the effective defence of the Ukrainian Armed Forces prompted Putin to adjust his tactics.

Now the Russian President wants to force Kiev to accept Moscow's claims to the southern and eastern territories of Ukraine.

Thus, Russia wants to create a "land corridor" between the west of the country and the occupied Crimea in 2014, as well as expand control over Donbas.

At the same time, Putin will continue his military pressure, including shelling of cities, hoping that this will force Zelensky to give up hopes of joining the alliance with the West and agree to neutral status and other demands of the Kremlin, the report said.

If Putin's demands are not met, then, according to US officials, Russia will try to keep all the territories occupied by its regular troops and continue to escalate.

"Based on our military assessments, it seems that Putin is returning to the blockade tactics," one of the officials said.

According to him, for citizens in the surrounding cities, this means weeks, and possibly months of missile and artillery attacks by the Russian army.

Former senior State Department official Daniel Fried said Putin's goal of seizing Ukraine has not changed, "only his tactics have changed".

With agencies inputs