Russian forces pounded civilian apartments in Ukraine and the Kremlin again raised the specter of nuclear war as the first diplomatic talks since the start of Russia’s 5-day-old invasion failed to produce a cease-fire Monday and the Russian economy staggered under a slew of Western economic and financial sanctions.
Russians were feeling the first real blowback from the invasion, even as Ukrainian forces continued to surprise Western military experts with the strength of their resistance and their ability — for now — to keep Kyiv and other major cities out of Russia’s grasp.
The ruble’s value plummeted on world currency exchanges Monday as the U.S. froze Russian central bank assets. Switzerland, whose banks have long been a shelter for Russian oligarch money, broke from its tradition of global neutrality to begin freezing Russian assets.
Russian President Vladimir Putin showed no sign of backing off his violent push to prevent the former Soviet republic from leaving Moscow’s orbit and to push back the NATO military alliance from Eastern Europe. Despite the shaky start to the operation, military experts say Russia continues to hold a massive manpower and firepower advantage over its smaller neighbor.
Embattled but defiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought to solidify his country’s ties to the democratic West by formally applying to join the European Union. The symbolic move was likely to anger Mr. Putin, who ordered Russia’s land, air and sea nuclear forces to be placed on higher alert in a bid, he said, to warn off Western countries coming to Ukraine’s aid in the fight.
The Russian army showed mounting signs that it had overextended itself less than a week after invading Ukraine.
Seth G. Jones, who heads the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that if Moscow‘s advance continues to stall, its forces are likely to be “picked apart” by Ukrainian fighters unless they fundamentally revise the operation’s methods and goals.
Russian forces are “in a precarious position if Ukraine becomes a protracted war,” Mr. Jones wrote in a Twitter post late Sunday. “Assuming 150,000 Russian soldiers in Ukraine & a population of 44 million, that is a force ratio of 3.4 soldiers per 1,000 people. You can’t hold territory with those numbers.”
Former CIA senior officer Daniel Hoffman, who writes an analysis column for The Washington Times, told Fox News over the weekend that Russia has “overstretched” its military in Ukraine.
The Kremlin faced a mounting wall of resistance and few defenders.
The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly opened its first emergency session in decades to deal with the Ukraine invasion Monday. Assembly President Abdulla Shahid called for an immediate cease-fire, maximum restraint by all parties and “a full return to diplomacy and dialogue.”
The Russian military has denied targeting residential areas despite Ukrainian videos online showing the shelling of homes, schools and hospitals. Stepping up his rhetoric, Mr. Putin denounced the U.S. and its allies as an “empire of lies.”
Despite Mr. Putin’s alarming talk about a “special combat status” for Russia’s huge nuclear arsenal, a senior U.S. defense official said on background Monday that the United States had not seen any appreciable change in Russia’s nuclear posture.
More than 500,000 have fled
Amid the maneuvering, the human cost of the war continued to mount for Ukrainians. U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said at least 102 civilians had been killed and hundreds wounded in more than four days of fighting. She warned that the figure is likely a significant undercount. Mr. Zelenskyy cited reports of at least 16 children among the dead.
Officials estimate that more than a half-million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began. Many of them went to Poland, Romania and Hungary. Millions of others have become internally displaced as Russian forces rumble into the country from the north, south and east.
Russian troops have been advancing slowly on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital city, which is home to nearly 3 million people and was rocked by several large explosions Monday. A huge Russian military convoy rumbling toward the city suggested the fighting there is likely to grow more intense over the coming days.
The worst violence Monday was reported in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city. Online videos showed residential areas being shelled and apartment buildings shaken by powerful blasts just as a Ukrainian delegation was holding talks with Russian officials on the Ukraine-Belarus border.
Although the talks did not result in a cease-fire, The Associated Press reported that a top Putin aide and head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, said the meeting lasted nearly five hours and that the envoys “found certain points on which common positions could be foreseen.” He said they agreed to continue the discussions in the coming days.
“The most important thing is that we agreed to continue negotiating,” Mr. Medinsky told reporters.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said later on Twitter that “the Russian side, unfortunately, still has a very biased view of the destructive processes it has launched.”
It remains to be seen how the mounting sanctions and economic pressure on Russia might affect the talks. Russians awoke to a reeling domestic economy, with the ruble losing nearly 30% of its value against the dollar and trading halted on the Russian stock market.
The situation forced Russia’s central bank to hike interest rates to 20% from 9.5%. Russia’s central bank acknowledged in a statement that “external conditions for the Russian economy have drastically changed.”
“Due to the current situation, the Bank of Russia has decided not to open a stock market section, a derivatives market section, or a derivatives market section on the Moscow Exchange today,” it said.
Photos circulating showed ordinary Russians lining up to withdraw cash from ATMs. The European subsidiary of Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, faced failure after a run on deposits.
The Kremlin said Mr. Putin planned to hold emergency meetings with economic advisers as Russia’s “fortress economy” faces major sanctions and the decision by the Group of Seven leading industrial nations to cut it off from the global SWIFT financial processing system.
The U.S. and other Western powers clamped down further Monday by restricting Moscow’s ability to tap into the bulk of its $640 billion in foreign currency reserves, a war chest Mr. Putin built up in recent years to make Moscow less vulnerable to outside economic pressure.
In yet another blow to Russia’s economy, the oil giant Shell said it was pulling out of the country because of the Ukraine invasion. Shell said it would withdraw from its joint ventures with state-owned gas company Gazprom and other entities and end its involvement in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project between Russia and Europe.
Underscoring Western anger with the invasion of Ukraine, Switzerland waived its long-standing policy of neutrality and backed sanctions against Russia. “The Swiss Federal Council has decided today to fully adopt EU sanctions,” Swiss Confederation President Ignazio Cassis said at a news briefing. “It is an unparalleled action of Switzerland, who has always stayed neutral before.
“Russia’s attack is an attack on freedom, an attack on democracy, an attack on the civil population and an attack on the institutions of a free country,” Mr. Cassis said. “This cannot be accepted regarding international law, this cannot be accepted politically and this cannot be accepted morally.”
Strategic ports in Ukraine’s south came under assault from Russian forces. Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, is “hanging on,” said Zelenskyy adviser Oleksiy Arestovich. An oil depot was reported bombed in the eastern city of Sumy. Ukrainian protesters demonstrated against encroaching Russian troops in the port of Berdyansk.
Across Ukraine, terrified families huddled overnight in shelters, basements and corridors.
“I sit and pray for these negotiations to end successfully so that they reach an agreement to end the slaughter, and so there is no more war,” said Alexandra Mikhailova, weeping as she clutched her cat in a makeshift shelter in the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol. Around her, parents sought to console children and keep them warm.
• Mike Glenn, David R. Sands and Joseph Clark contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports. Mr. Clark reported from Poland.
