Russia-Ukraine war escalates before NATO summit

6 hours ago 1

Russia pounds Kyiv ahead of NATO summit, as Ukraine war returns to center stage amid high-stakes diplomacy.

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

The leaders of NATO gather in Turkey tomorrow with the war in Ukraine high on the agenda. It has been more than four years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor, and the conflict shows few signs of slowing down. Indeed, just last night, Russia launched heavy airstrikes on Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, again. And Ukraine struck back again with a wave of drones across Russia and the occupied territories. Joining us to talk through all of this, our correspondents on the ground, NPR's Joanna Kakissis in Kyiv and Charles Maynes in Moscow. Hi, you two.

JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: Hello, Mary Louise.

CHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.

KELLY: Hey. So, Joanna, I - the last time I talked to you, there had just been a huge attack on Kyiv where you are, and that was just a few days ago. Start with what happened today. I'm told you went to visit an apartment building that was hit by a missile?

KAKISSIS: Yeah, that's right. So, Mary Louise, imagine this building. It's, like, nine stories high, and it's been crushed in the middle by a missile.

(SOUNDBITE OF CRANES MOVING RUBBLE)

KAKISSIS: Rescue workers are using cranes to get to these damaged apartments, which are missing walls and floors. I did see a couple of emergency workers inside a torn-up apartment on the top floor, and they were sifting through the rubble, through these chunks of concrete by hand to find the survivors, but they found a body instead. And watching from below was a small crowd of people, including a woman who saw this body removed from her home, and it was someone she loved.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Screaming).

KAKISSIS: And her screams just cut through all the noisy rescue operations - the cranes, the slabs of concrete falling.

KELLY: Oh, that poor woman, all these poor people. Do we have a sense of the scale of damage and of people killed or wounded in this attack?

KAKISSIS: Yeah. At least 22 people were killed in Kyiv, and in the surrounding area around Kyiv dozens more were injured. Thirty sites were hit. And this attack is the second major one in, like, four days. Like you mentioned, the last time we talked, one had just happened. Last week, Russian missiles killed more than 30 people in the Ukrainian capital.

KELLY: Well, Charles, jump in because Ukraine is not letting this go unanswered, to put it mildly. We have been reporting on Ukrainian drone strikes where you are in Russia. What's the damage there?

MAYNES: Yeah. You know, Russia's defense ministry today said its air defenses intercepted and destroyed some 500 Ukrainian drones overnight. But clearly, some are getting through. Ukraine struck the main oil refinery in St. Petersburg. This is the third time they've done so this summer. They attacked Russia's largest oil refinery in Omsk. This is in Siberia, 1,700 miles from the front line. And in Crimea - the peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine back in 2014 and really what was a precursor to the war we're in now...

KELLY: Yeah.

MAYNES: ...There's a total power blackout from drone strikes. And, you know, all of this is really of a pattern. I mean, so much so that these Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure in particular have caused a massive shortage of gas at the pump, which is really quite something, given that Russia's one of the world's largest oil producers.

KELLY: Such irony there. How big of a problem does that seem to be in Russia?

MAYNES: Well, the severity of the problem seems to vary from region to region, but this much is clear, it - it's a nationwide problem. Now, Moscow, it must be said, appears to be getting by. I talked to drivers here who say they have to hunt for gas, but the waits are tolerable, maybe two or three hours, or if you're lucky, a bit quicker. But some places in Russia are just bone dry, or you sit in line all day to fill up the tank. And beyond commuters and taxis and that sort of thing, this impacts industries, like trucking and logistics for all sorts of things. Also, agriculture - I mean, how do you run these combines in the fields if there's no petrol? And nobody really has an answer to that.

KELLY: OK. Let's move to the diplomacy, to the efforts to try to end this war. We know President Trump has been personally engaged in that, up to and including the summit last summer with Vladimir Putin on U.S. soil in Alaska. It seems as though energy and investment in the diplomacy has dropped off amid the war with Iran. Question to both of you - Joanna, you first. Where do things stand?

KAKISSIS: Well, you know, Zelenskyy has said that he still hopes the U.S. will engage in peace talks, and he did call President Trump on July 4 to congratulate the U.S. on its 250th birthday. So relations are still there. But Zelenskyy is no longer counting on the Trump administration, especially since, you know, the White House has often seemed to be much closer aligned with the Kremlin. He's relying now more on Ukraine's European allies and on Ukrainian defense tech, which has developed these long-range drones that are hitting Russia's oil infrastructure and that have really brought this war home to the Russians so they can feel it. Ukraine has changed minds, though, not only in Europe but in Washington. Trump did acknowledge recently that he's impressed by Ukraine's fighting spirit, and that's quite a turnaround from the days when he said Ukraine had no cards.

MAYNES: Well, also among world leaders congratulating President Trump on the U.S.'s 250th birthday was Vladimir Putin. Putin and Trump talked for some 90 minutes in an exchange a Kremlin aide said was focused heavily on the war in Ukraine. Trump reaffirmed his readiness to work towards a rapid end to the fighting, while Putin apparently has expressed support for a diplomatic resolution if - and it's a big if - it took into account Russia's fundamental approach, which I think you can read as his demand that Ukraine cede the rest of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine to Russia.

Putin also presented what he called the real situation on the battlefield, one in which Putin insists Russian forces are rapidly advancing. Only that claim runs counter to independent analysts who say Russian forces with few exceptions are making incremental gains and with heavy losses.

KELLY: Well, so bottom line, and looking ahead to this NATO summit that's about to kick off in Turkey, is there any sense that we're closer to an end to the war in Ukraine? Again, Joanna, to you first, and then, Charles, chime in.

KAKISSIS: Well, Mary Louise, Ukraine and Russia remain so far apart on what an end to this war actually means. I mean, Ukraine does not want to accept any deal that would reward the Kremlin for starting this full-scale war, so they refuse to cede any territory to Russia. The people we spoke to today also don't see an end to this war, and that's, like, really, really scary for them, especially now that Moscow is using these missiles on Ukrainian cities that are causing so much damage and killing lots of people. Yelena Zavozina, she lives near the apartment building that was hit. She had this message for NATO.

YELENA ZAVOZINA: Please just stop this war. We don't want to die. We are innocent people, you know?

KAKISSIS: She says NATO leaders can pressure Russia to end this war if they want to.

KELLY: Please just stop this war. OK. Charles, how about you?

MAYNES: You know, I think it's an inflection point of sorts here. You know, Putin is clearly under pressure by some in his government, by his economic team and increasingly the public to bring this war to a close or at least sell a victory to the public, even if it falls short of stated objectives. The problem here is there's another faction, the nationalists who want him to bring this war to an end through victory, through escalation, through hitting Ukraine harder and through threatening Europe and NATO more directly. And if anything, I think these latest attacks on Kyiv and the scenes that Joanna describes suggest President Putin might just be listening to them.

KELLY: That's NPR's Charles Maynes reporting from Moscow and Joanna Kakissis reporting from Kyiv. Thanks to you both.

KAKISSIS: You're welcome.

MAYNES: Thank you.

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