CNN Shows Fires in Kyiv as Correspondent Declares ‘This City Is Gradually Getting Encircled’

CNN’s Alex Marquardt, who is reporting on location from Ukraine, relayed on Friday night that Kyiv is being “encircled” by Russian troops.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned his people on Friday that the worst of the fighting was ahead of them.

“Tonight the enemy will use all the resources they have to break our resistance in a mean, cruel, and inhuman way,” Zelensky said during an address to Ukraine’s people. “Tonight they will assault us.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into the country on Thursday, and fighting has been bloody, according to reports.

A siege of Kyiv had been predicted as the next move for Putin’s army. According to Marquardt, that siege was well underway just a few hours before daybreak in the city Saturday.

On CNN Tonight, host Wolf Blitzer showed his audience images of the violence in the city, including what appeared to be a burned out vehicle on a deserted road.

Marquardt commented that Russian troops were attacking the city from multiple directions.

“Well, Wolf, what’s really striking is that it is incredibly quiet in the city until that silence is pierced by the sounds of the fighting,” he said. “We have heard some of the closest explosions to the center of downtown Kyiv in just the past hour. It is to the western part of the city just a couple miles or kilometers away.

Marquardt noted that “fierce fighting” was taking place all around him:

And now all that is coupled with what we know that the Russians have been making their major push coming in from the north. So, this city is gradually getting encircled. Wolf, we’ve heard predictions from the U.S. side that the city could fall in a matter of days. The Ukrainian president saying that there’s a very decisive moment tonight for Ukraine, that the fate of Ukraine is being decided right now.

Watch above, via CNN.

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