Kyiv: Russian forces escalated their attacks on crowded urban areas Tuesday, bombarding the central square in Ukraine's second-biggest city Kharkiv and Kyiv's main TV tower in what the country's president called a blatant campaign of terror.
According to Ukrainian authorities, Russian troops have landed in Ukraine's second largest city Kharkiv on Wednesday.
Russian airborne troops landed in the city early on Wednesday, they said.
At least 21 people were killed and 112 wounded in shelling in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in the last 24 hours, regional governor Oleg Synegubov said.
The authorities have said Russian missile attacks hit the centre of Ukraine's second-largest city, including residential areas and the regional administration building.
Nobody will forgive. Nobody will forget
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Kherson captured
Moscow said on Wednesday it had captured Kherson, a provincial capital of around a quarter of a million people on the southern front. There was no immediate word from Ukraine but the regional governor had said overnight that it was surrounded, under fire, and Russian troops were looting shops and pharmacies.
It would be the biggest city to fall so far, with a strategic position astride the Dnieper River that divides Ukraine down the middle.
Also in the south, Russia is putting intense pressure on the port of Mariupol, which it says it has surrounded in a ring around the entire coast of the Sea of Azov. The city's mayor said Mariupol had been under intense shelling since late Tuesday and was unable to evacuate its wounded.
But on the other two main fronts in the east and north, Russia so far has little to show for its advance, with Ukraine's two biggest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, holding out in the face of increasingly intense bombardment.
“Nobody will forgive. Nobody will forget,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed after the bloodshed on the square in Kharkiv.
Zelenskyy also claimed almost 6,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the invasion began last Thursday. Russia has not released overall casualty numbers and the figure could not be confirmed.
Russian convoy nears Kyiv
Meanwhile, a 40-mile convoy of hundreds of Russian tanks and other vehicles advanced slowly on Kyiv, the capital city of nearly 3 million people, in what the West feared was a bid by Russian President Vladimir Putin to topple the government and install a Kremlin-friendly regime.
The invading forces also pressed their assault on other towns and cities, including the strategic ports of Odesa and Mariupol in the south.
Day 6 of the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II found Russia increasingly isolated, beset by the sanctions that have thrown its economy into turmoil and left the country practically friendless, apart from a few nations like China, Belarus and North Korea.
Casualties mount
As the fighting in Ukraine raged, the death toll remained unclear. One senior Western intelligence official estimated that more than 5,000 Russian soldiers had been captured or killed.
The UN human rights office said it has recorded 136 civilian deaths. The real toll is believed to be far higher.
Britain's Defense Ministry said it had seen an increase in Russian air and artillery strikes on populated urban areas over the past two days.
Many military experts worry that Russia may be shifting tactics. Moscow's strategy in Chechnya and Syria was to use artillery and air bombardments to pulverize cities and crush fighters' resolve.
Transmission towers, TV stations hit
Ukrainian authorities said five people were killed in the attack on the TV tower, which is a couple of miles from central Kyiv and a short walk from numerous apartment buildings.
A TV control room and power substation were hit, and at least some Ukrainian channels briefly stopped broadcasting, officials said.
The bombing came after Russia announced it would target transmission facilities used by Ukraine's intelligence agency. It urged people living near such places to leave their homes.
Zelenskyy's office also reported a powerful missile attack on the site of the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial, near the tower.
In Kharkiv, with a population of about 1.5 million, at least six people were killed when the region's Soviet-era administrative building on Freedom Square was hit with what was believed to be a missile.
The Slovenian Foreign Ministry said its consulate in Kharkiv, located in another large building on the square, was destroyed in the attack. The entrance to the consulate was between a jewellery store and a bank.
The attack on Freedom Square Ukraine's largest plaza, and the nucleus of public life in the city was seen by many Ukrainians as brazen evidence that the Russian invasion wasn't just about hitting military targets but also about breaking their spirit.
Zelenskyy pronounced the attack on the square frank, undisguised terror and a war crime. This is state terrorism of the Russian Federation, he said.
In an emotional appeal to the European Parliament later, Zelenskyy said: We are fighting also to be equal members of Europe. I believe that today we are showing everybody that is what we are."
Another Russian airstrike hit a residential area near a hospital in the city of Zhytomyr, Mayor Serih Sukhomlin said in a Facebook video.
Human Rights Watch said it documented a cluster bomb attack outside a hospital in Ukraine's east in recent days. Local residents also reported the use of such weapons in Kharkiv and the village of Kiyanka, The Kremlin denied using cluster bombs.
Cluster bombs shoot smaller bomblets over a large area, many of which fail to explode until long after they've been dropped. If their use in Ukraine is confirmed, that would represent a new level of brutality in the war and could lead to even further isolation of Russia.
Futile talks
The first talks between Russia and Ukraine since the invasion were held Monday, but ended with only an agreement to talk again. On Tuesday, though, Zelenskyy said Russia should stop bombing first.
As for dialogue, I think yes, but stop bombarding people first and start negotiating afterwards, he told CNN.
Moscow made new threats of escalation, days after raising the specter of nuclear war. A top Kremlin official warned that the West's economic war against Russia could turn into a real one.
Inside Russia, a top radio station critical of the Kremlin was taken off the air after authorities threatened to shut it down over its coverage of the invasion. Among other things, the Kremlin is not allowing the fighting to be referred to as an invasion or war.
Roughly 660,000 people have fled Ukraine, and countless others have taken shelter underground. Bomb damage has left hundreds of thousands of families without drinking water, UN humanitarian coordinator Martin Griffiths said.
Belarus troops join Russian forces
A Ukrainian military official said Belarusian troops joined the war Tuesday in the Chernihiv region in the north, without providing details. But just before that, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his country had no plans to join the fight.
As for the Russians' advance on the capital, the leading edge of the convoy was 17 miles (25 kilometres) from the centre of the city, according to satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies.
A senior U.S. defense official said that Russia's military progress including by the massive convoy has slowed, plagued by logistical and supply problems.
Some Russian military columns have run out of gas and food, the official said, and morale has suffered as a result.
Overall, the Russian military has been stalled by fierce resistance on the ground and a surprising inability to completely dominate Ukraine's airspace.
The immense convoy, with vehicles packed together along narrow roads, would seemingly be a big fat target for Ukrainian forces, the senior Western intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.
But it also shows you that the Russians feel pretty comfortable being out in the open in these concentrations because they feel that they're not going to come under air attack or rocket or missile attack, the official said.
Ukrainians have used whatever they had to try to stop the Russian advance. On a highway between Odesa and Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, residents piled tractor tires filled with sand and topped with sandbags to block convoys.
(With inputs from AP via PTI.)
