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Civilians were also killed Sunday while trying to evacuate near a battered bridge in Irpin, a town outside the capital, Kyiv, visuals verified by The Washington Post showed.
More than 1.5 million refugees from Ukraine have fled to neighboring countries over the past 10 days, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, said Sunday. He tweeted that the mass exodus is “the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.” Grandi recently predicted that more than 4 million people could be displayed by the conflict in the days to come.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that Russia would press on with its invasion unless Ukraine stopped fighting.
It was time for Ukraine to “show a more constructive approach that fully takes into account the emerging realities,” he said, according to the Kremlin, an apparent reference to Ukraine’s military and territorial losses since Russia’s invasion. Speaking by phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Putin said the war was “going according to plan” and on time. He denied Russia was responsible for the civilian casualty toll, according to a Russian readout of the call.
A spokesman for Russia’s defense ministry said Sunday that the military had struck and disabled Ukraine’s Starokostiantyniv military air base, about 150 miles southwest of Kyiv early Saturday, using “long-range, high precision weapons. The airport was among dozens of targets, including a Russian-made air defense system owned by Ukraine, the spokesman said.
Later Saturday, in a video message, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that a missile strike on Vinnystia, about 70 miles southeast of the air base, had “completely destroyed the airport.”
Zelensky repeated his appeal for allied nations to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. “We repeat every day: close the sky over Ukraine. Close it for all Russian rockets. For all Russian military aviation. For all these terrorists. Make a humanitarian airspace. Without rockets, without bombs from the air. We are people and this is your humanitarian obligation to protect us.
Failing that, supply “airplanes so that we can protect ourselves,” he added.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that the United States is exploring how it might supply Ukraine with fighter jets from NATO nations. “We are looking actively now at the question of airplanes that Poland may provide to Ukraine and looking at how we might be able to backfill should Poland choose to supply those planes,” he told reporters during a visit to Chisinau, Moldova.
“I can’t speak to the timeline but I can just tell you that we’re looking at it very, very actively,” Blinken said.
In Irpin, outside Kyiv, video published Sunday showed a man wearing a yellow arm band, usually worn by Ukrainian forces, and carrying a gun over his shoulder standing across from a church and sidewalk crowded with people carrying suitcases. He takes a few steps toward an intersection before an explosion rips through the middle of the street.
The area is covered in smoke. Someone runs out of the building and drags the man with the yellow armband out of the street. Soldiers sprint across the intersection to people collapsed on the ground, and someone shouts “Medic!”
Associated Press photos of the aftermath show civilians killed in the attack. Lynsey Addario, a photographer working for the New York Times who witnessed the attack, said in a message posted on Twitter that “at least three members of a family of four were killed in front of me.”
Fahim reported from Istanbul, Cahlan from Washington and Ryan from Tallinn, Estonia. Jennifer Hassan in London and Danielle Paquette from Dakar, Senegal contributed.
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