Staff Report –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The people of Ukraine have taken up arms to help their defense forces fight off the unprecedented Russian invasion and their efforts appear to be working to slow the advance toward Kyiv, the capitol city, according to on the ground reporting by The New York Times and other news outlets with reporters in country.

“Ukraine’s defense forces, outmanned and outgunned, strongly resisted the Russian invasion on Saturday, battling to keep control of the capital, Kyiv, and other cities. So far, it seems their efforts have been effective,” the Times reported on Saturday. “There was intense street fighting, and bursts of gunfire and explosions could be heard across Kyiv … while the latest Western intelligence information said the Russian advance had been stalled.”

By Saturday afternoon, the speed of Russia’s advance in Ukraine had slowed, sources said, most likely because of logistical difficulties and “strong Ukrainian resistance,” Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement based on intelligence updates.

Most of the more than 150,000 Russian troops who had massed around Ukraine are now fighting in the country, but they are “increasingly frustrated by their lack of momentum” as they face stiff Ukrainian resistance, a Pentagon official said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in a video that his country’s fighters had “withstood and successfully repelled enemy attacks.”

The Kremlin claimed that Russian forces were resuming their advance on Ukraine on Saturday, and that President Vladimir V. Putin had ordered a pause on Friday while possible talks with Ukraine were being considered.

The civilian resistance in Ukraine received instructions from the military Saturday on how to help stop the Russian advance. They were told to destroy a road if they saw tanks passing along it, because fuel trucks were sure to follow; to burn a forest if they spotted Russian vehicles there; and to shoot out tires on military vehicles if they had rifles and could shoot from a distance. Above all, the Defense Ministry advised people to keep themselves safe but make life for Russian soldiers as difficult as possible.

Russia has established attack lines into three cities: Kyiv in the north, Kharkiv in the northeast and Kherson in the south.

Videos and photos showed a residential building that had been struck by a missile in southwestern Kyiv, about 1.5 miles from Sikorsky Memorial Airport. At least six people were injured and dozens more evacuated, according to emergency services.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko of Kyiv imposed a curfew starting at 5 p.m. local time Saturday until 8 a.m. on Monday as the battle for the capital rages. He warned that “all civilians who are on the street during the curfew will be considered members of the enemy’s sabotage and reconnaissance groups.”

Across Ukraine, people huddled in air-raid shelters, lined up at bank machines and stocked up on essentials. More than 150,000 Ukrainian refugees have fled to Poland, Moldova, Romania and beyond, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

President Putin “is being met with a greater Ukrainian resistance than he calculated on,” the British government said on Saturday after a phone call between Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. The two leaders agreed that Russia should be isolated diplomatically and financially, the statement added, and expressed concern about Belarus’s support for Moscow. Johnson paid tribute “to the incredible heroism and bravery of President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people.”

***
More than 150,000 people have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries since Russian troops invaded the country early Thursday morning, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, said in a tweet on Saturday.

About half have fled west into Poland, while others have crossed the southwestern border into Hungary or have gone south into Romania and Moldova.

***
Not since John F. Kennedy and Nikita S. Khrushchev squared off over Berlin and Cuba have an American president and Russian leader gone eyeball to eyeball in quite such a dramatic fashion. While the two nuclear states are not poised for war directly with each other, as they were six decades ago, the showdown between Biden and Putin nonetheless holds enormous consequences for the world order that may be felt for years to come.

Biden has denounced Mr. Putin as “the aggressor” for invading Ukraine and vowed to make him “a pariah on the international stage.” To that end, Biden decided on Friday to impose sanctions on Mr. Putin himself, targeting him personally in a way that never happened even during the Cold War. Mr. Putin, for his part, is testing Mr. Biden’s mettle at a time when the Russians have concluded that the United States is divided and distracted at home, leaving little room for consensus, according to The Times.

***

One of the more experienced Times columnists in writing about foreign affairs, Thomas L. Friendman, wrote on Friday that “our world is not going to be the same again because this war has no historical parallel.”

“We may be back in the jungle,” he wrote. “But today the jungle is wired.”

“Welcome to World War Wired,” he concluded. “The first war in a totally interconnected world. This will be the Cossacks meet the World Wide Web…. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is our first real taste of how crazy and unstable this kind of wired world can get.”

***

YouTube, which is owned by Google, said on Saturday that it was suspending RT and other Russian state-sponsored media from selling advertising on its channels. It also said it would limit recommendations to videos posted by those channels.

The move follows similar actions by other technology companies, including Meta and Twitter, to block Russian state media from generating advertising revenue on social media. Meta said it had also refused Russian demands that it stop independent fact-checking of posts from state-owned media, while Twitter said it was restricting its service for some people in Russia.