KYIV: Russian forces pressed their way deeper into Ukraine on Thursday, seizing a strategic seaport and threatening to overtake a major energy hub on the eighth day of the invasion, even as the two sides met in Belarus for a second round of face-to-face discussions.

Russian troops are seeking to lay seige to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, seeking to cut it off from electricity, water, heating and transportation, its mayor said Thursday.

“They are trying to create a blockade here, just like in Leningrad,” Vadym Boichenko said in a statement referring to the horrific seige of Russia’s second largest city by the Nazis during World War II, which left hundreds of thousands dead.

Ukrainian media reports said Russian troops had also entered the southern city of Enerhodar, a major energy hub on the Dnieper River that accounts for about one-quarter of the country’s power generation. It is the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the biggest in Europe.

Ukrainian president says if his country falls, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia could be next

The mayor of Enerhodar said Ukrainian forces on the city’s edges are battling the Russian troops.

In addition, nine people died and four were injured after Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools, in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, the local governor said on Thursday.

“Russian aircraft also attacked two schools in the Staraya Podusivka area and private homes. Rescuers are working in the area,” the governor of the Chernihiv region, Vyacheslav Chaus, said.

Overnight explosions heard by Associated Press reporters in the capital, Kyiv, were missiles being shot down by Ukraine’s air defence systems, according to the city’s mayor. Russia’s 40-mile-long convoy of tanks and other vehicles remains stalled outside Kyiv, which has been struck by deadly shelling.

In an impassioned plea on Thursday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West to increase military aid, saying Russia would advance on the rest of Europe otherwise.

“If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!” Zelensky told a press conference.

“If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next,” he said, calling for direct talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, saying it was “the only way to stop this war”.

Cutting Ukraine’s access to its Black Sea and Azov coast would deal a crippling blow to the country’s economy and allow Russia to build a land corridor stretching from its border, across Crimea, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014, and all the way west to Romania.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2022