Russia poured more troops into Ukraine on Saturday and intensified its bombardment of strategic positions around the country after coming up against strong Ukrainian resistance.

 

Ukraine’s leader vowed to continue battling an invasion by a much better-armed adversary even as nearly 120,000 people have so far fled Ukraine into neighboring countries, said media reports, citing the UN refugee agency.

 

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday evening said “we will fight as much as possible to free our country,” as the nation’s army repelled Russian armed forces’ attempts to capture the capital city Kyiv and other major towns in a third day of battles. “Ukrainians are on their land and will never, to no one, surrender it,” he said in a televised address.

 

EU foreign ministers are set to meet virtually on Sunday to discuss further support measures for Ukraine and possibly additional sanctions.

 

Terrified men, women and children sought safety inside and underground amid a 39-hour curfew the government imposed to keep people off the streets.

 

The United Nations said more than 150,000 Ukrainians had fled for Poland, Moldova and other neighboring countries and warned the number could grow to 4 million if fighting escalates.

 

“We will fight for as long as needed to liberate our country,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised.

Meanwhile, Russia claimed its assault on Ukraine was aimed only at military targets, but bridges, schools and residential neighborhoods have been hit since the invasion began Thursday with air and missile strikes and Russian troops entering Ukraine from the north, east and south.

 

The Kremlin gave a terse confirmation of a phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev but gave no hint of restarting talks. A day earlier, Zelenskyy offered to negotiate a key Russian demand: abandoning ambitions of joining Nato.

 

He claims the West has failed to take seriously Russia’s security concerns about Nato, the Western military alliance that Ukraine aspires to join. But he has also expressed scorn about Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent state.

 

To aid Ukraine’s ability to hold out, the US pledged an additional $350 million in military assistance to Ukraine on Saturday, including anti-tank weapons, body armor and small arms. Germany said it would send missiles and anti-tank weapons to the besieged country and that it would close its airspace to Russian planes.

 

Even as Zelenskyy called on his countrymen to join the fight, it was impossible to know how effective Ukraine has been in slowing the Russian advance. A curfew in Kyiv set to last through Monday morning forced everyone inside, though the relative quiet of the capital was sporadically broken by gunfire.

 

Fighting on the city’s outskirts suggested that small Russian units were trying to clear a path for the main forces. Small groups of Russian troops were reported inside Kyiv, but Britain and the U.S. said the bulk of Russian forces were 19 miles (30 kilometers) from the city’s center as of Saturday afternoon.

 

Ukraine’s health minister reported Saturday that 198 people, including three children, had been killed and more than 1,000 others had been wounded during Europe’s largest land war since World War II. It was unclear whether those figures included both military and civilian casualties.

 

In Kyiv, a missile struck a high-rise apartment building in the southwestern outskirts near one of the city’s two passenger airports, leaving a jagged hole of ravaged apartments over several floors. A rescue worker said six civilians were injured.

 

Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, said troops in Kyiv were fighting Russian “sabotage groups.” Ukraine says some 200 Russian soldiers have been captured and 3,500 have been killed.

 

Without elaborating, Markarova said Ukraine was gathering evidence of war crimes to submit to The Hague.

 

Zelenskyy reiterated his openness to talks with Russia in a video message Saturday, saying he welcomed an offer from the leaders of Turkey and Azerbaijan to organize diplomatic efforts, which so far have faltered.

 

Putin hasn’t disclosed his ultimate plans for Ukraine, but Western officials believe he is determined to overthrow Ukraine’s government and replace it with a regime of his own, redrawing the map of Europe and reviving Moscow’s Cold War-era influence.