Allies ready strong sanctions against Russia as bombardments of Kyiv grow fierce

The latest steps to economically choke Moscow and its ruling class come as Kyiv is under attack from Russian forces encroaching on Ukraine’s largest city. A massive fireball was visible to the southwest of Kyiv following a pounding explosion that rocked the city in the early-morning hours local time on Sunday. At least one high-rise apartment building had been struck directly earlier Saturday, fueling skepticism of Russia’s claim that it was targeting only military facilities.

Meanwhile, civilians have been fleeing westward in droves to escape the worsening fighting. The United Nations said more than 150,000 Ukrainians have fled the country already, while U.S. officials noted that the lines of those trying to cross into Poland and other nations were extremely long.

As the humanitarian crisis worsened, volunteers in Poland and other countries neighboring Ukraine to the West scrambled to organize food, shelter, transportation and other resources to meet the needs of the incoming waves of refugees.

Leaders across Europe stepped up on Saturday promising more concrete action to help Ukraine, even though the United States and its NATO allies pledged not to send any troops into Ukraine. The United States announced that it would send Ukraine an additional $350 million worth of small arms, protective gear and anti-armor missiles — including antitank Javelins — to help defend the country from the slowed but steadily encroaching Russian onslaught. Germany, meanwhile, announced plans to send 1,000 antitank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles to Ukraine to help it beat back Russian forces.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the contributions as he tried to buoy his country’s spirits, posting several video messages on the messaging app Telegram throughout Saturday.

He vowed to fight “for as long as it takes to liberate the country.” Although Western officials have noted that Ukraine’s resistance to the invasion was stronger than Russian President Vladimir Putin had anticipated, Russian troops continued to press into the country.

Russian reconnaissance forces had entered Kyiv, a senior U.S. defense official said, though this person would not say whether those were Russian special operations troops, known as Spetsnaz. Though the bulk of Russian troops remained about 20 kilometers outside the capital to the north on Saturday, the city was repeatedly bombarded with shelling from Russian positions outside the city. At least one high-rise apartment building was struck directly as part of the barrage, fueling skepticism that Russia is targeting military facilities as it claims.

Russian troops have been moving steadily into Ukraine from the north, east and south, launching air, land and amphibious assaults. The Pentagon believes that over 50 percent of the troops Russia dispatched to the theater around Ukraine are now operating inside the country,according to the senior defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the unfolding situation on the ground.

“The Russians are increasingly frustrated by their lack of momentum, particularly in the north part of Ukraine,” the senior defense official said, noting that a “viable” and "very determined Ukrainian resistance” had “slowed them down.”

Ukrainian forces managed to shoot down two Russian IL-76 transport planes late Friday, though it was not clear if Russian personnel were killed or if the equipment the planes were carrying was destroyed. In the Black Sea, Russian missiles struck a cargo ship and an oil tanker that reportedly was bringing fuel supplies to Ukrainian forces, in what a Ukrainian shipping company claimed was a targeted attack. Russian forces also destroyed a dam in a water reservoir near Kyiv, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States said Saturday, creating a flood risk in the already-beleaguered capital.

As the intensity of attacks increased, casualties on both sides have been rising, but accurately counting the dead have proved difficult to verify. On Saturday, Ukrainian leaders claimed that fewer than 200 civilians had died, but that forces had killed or injured around 3,500 Russian troops — numbers that a senior U.S. defense official said the Pentagon could not, and probably would not ever be able, to verify. The United Nations reported late Saturday that there had been at least 240 casualties, including at least 64 dead.

The Ukrainian government also announced a hotline for Russian mothers to call to see if their sons were among those killed in the fighting — apparently a move to wins hearts and minds in Russia, where nearly all of the media is state-controlled. There were reports Saturday of Twitter and Facebook being blocked.

Ukraine has banned men ages 18 to 60 from leaving the country in case they need to be called upon to join the national defense. Cities have been enlisting civilian volunteers to join territorial defense forces across the country. Even people in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine that has been treated as a safe haven, were preparing for the war to arrive on their doorstep.

In Kyiv, citizens lined up at a police station for weapons they could use in defense of the capital. Others made molotov cocktails to use against Russian forces if they reached the city.

The city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, also imposed a 5 p.m. curfew on Saturday, warning that anyone found on the streets after that would be treated as “members of the enemy’s sabotage and reconnaissance groups.”

Ukrainian authorities have encouraged civilians to rip down street signs in an effort to confuse Russian troops, and called for technology experts to volunteer for the “IT army” to “fight on the cyber front.” Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has also seen heavy fighting and has long championed itself as a tech hub.

As Ukraine’s cities came under bombardment and citizens prepared for potential hand-to-hand combat with Russian troops in the streets, NATO countries made additional gestures of solidarity. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic all shuttered their airspace to Russian aircraft, encouraging the rest of Europe to do the same. Meanwhile, Sweden and Finland denied a top Russian official flying to Moscow permission to have his plane cross their airspace, as a rebuke over the war being promulgated in Ukraine.

“War has returned to Europe,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a video address Saturday, predicting that "this crisis will last. This war will last,” and that the Ukraine war will “have lasting consequences.”

It is not clear how Russia will respond to the West’s latest financially punitive measures. Earlier on Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had shrugged at the sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other nations, calling them “quite serious” but “predictable.”

Going after Russia’s central bank, and barring its financial institutions from SWIFT — a move administration officials intimated would not include any waivers for energy transactions — may surprise the Kremlin. The administration is coupling those actions with additional sanctions on oligarchs as well, that will “go after their yachts, their luxury apartments, their money and their ability to send their kids to fancy colleges in the West,” a senior administration official said. “Russia has become a global economic and financial pariah.”

The strategy is not without risks — and experts note they could be viewed in Moscow as an escalation. It is possible that the Kremlin could react by escalating hostilities against Ukraine. Or it is possible that the Kremlin could attempt to take measures aimed directly at the West.

“There is no particular need in maintaining diplomatic relations,” former president Dmitry Medvedev, who serves as the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, wrote Saturday on his official page on the Russia social media site VKontakte.

“Padlock the embassies,” he continued. "We may look at each other in binoculars and gunsights.”

Even before the sanctions were announced, the potential for a diplomatic off-ramp to bring an end to the fighting on the ground in Ukraine appeared grim. The Kremlin announced Saturday that Putin reversed a Friday decision to schedule a strategic pause in attacks, to lure Kyiv to negotiations about a “neutral status” for Ukraine — a posture that would require its government to abandon NATO aspirations.

But Ukrainian officials bristled at what they viewed as an effort to strong-arm them, criticizing Russia for not being willing to have “full-fledged negotiations.” By Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had received the green light to “advance in all sectors,” resuming its assault “along key axes.”

The Pentagon has tracked the Russian invasion along three main pathways: from Belarus in the northwest, the Belgorod region of Russia in the northeast, and by land and sea in the south, via the Sea of Azov, the Black Sea and Russia’s positions in Crimea.

Robyn Dixon in Moscow; David L. Stern and Loveday Morris in Lviv, Ukraine; Sudarsan Raghavan in Kyiv, Ukraine; Rick Noack in Paris; Adila Suliman in London; and Shane Harris, John Hudson, Jeff Stein, Tyler Pager, Michael Birnbaum, Cate Cadell, Kimberly Kindy, Dan Lamothe, Chico Harlan, Tory Newmeyer, Kim Bellware, Timothy Bella, Joseph Menn, Miles Long, Marisa Iati, Atthar Mirza and Elyse Samuels in Washington contributed to this report.