KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian forces battled for control of a crucial energy-producing city in Ukraine’s south on Thursday and gained ground in their bid to cut off the country from the sea, as Ukrainian leaders called on citizens to rise up and wage guerrilla war against the invaders.
The fighting at Enerhodar, a city on the Dnieper River that accounts for about one-quarter of the country’s power generation, came as another round of talks between the two sides yielded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors inside Ukraine to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid.
The mayor of Enerhodar, the site of the biggest nuclear plant in Europe, said Ukrainian forces were battling Russian troops on the city’s outskirts. Video showed flames and clouds of black smoke rising above the city of over 50,000, with people streaming away from the inferno, past wrecked cars, as sirens wailed.
Moscow’s ground advance on Ukraine’s capital in the north has apparently stalled, with a huge armored column at a standstill outside Kyiv. And stiffer-than-expected resistance from the outmanned, outgunned Ukrainians has staved off the swift victory that Russia may have expected.
A top Russian officer, Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, commander of an airborne division, was killed in the fighting earlier this week, an officers organization in Russia reported.