The bombing came when Russian and Ukrainian delegations held talks for the first time on Monday. They met near Ukraine’s border with Belarus, a key Russian ally.
Oleh Sinehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional state administration, said on Monday that “dozens are dying” and that it has been confirmed that at least 11 people have died. He called the attacks in three areas of the predominantly Russian-speaking city, considered more friendly to Russia, a “war crime”.
“Russia’s enemy is shelling entire residential areas of Kharkiv, where there is no critical infrastructure, where there are no positions of the Ukrainian armed forces that the Russians could target,” he said in a statement to the Telegram.
When the shelling began, many Kharkiv residents lined up at grocery stores and other stores to replenish supplies after being closed for several days. Subsequently, images of damaged buildings and streets littered with blood and hastily dumped food were spread on the Internet. One video shown a still smoldering children’s clothing factory has been completely destroyed.
Alexei Zavrazhniy, a 32-year-old Kharkiv resident, said a rocket fell on a playground about 700 meters from his apartment. A second fell on the opposite side of the playground, damaging the place where Zavrazhny said he was taking his 9-month-old daughter to play. Fortunately, no one was injured here, he said, but he saw blood on the street elsewhere in the city.
Mark Hiznai, associate director of the weapons department at Human Rights Watch, told The Washington Post that Russian forces had used Smerch cluster munitions to disperse submunitions or bombs, according to footage.
“This attack clearly illustrates the inherent indiscriminate nature of cluster munitions and must be unequivocally condemned,” he said.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the open source group Bellingcat have identified the use of cluster munitions in other Russian attacks in Ukraine in recent days, analysts say, a worrying sign that Russia could turn to even more deadly military tactics.
As Putin’s plan for a “special operation” to quickly demoralize the Ukrainian army and occupy large cities without resistance seems to have failed, we can see a return to the bombing of the area, which caused so much damage to Chechen and Syrian civilians. in Moscow, the Conflict Intelligence Team, an open source intelligence group that monitors the Russian military, says in a tweet on Monday.
In Syria, where Russia has been in alliance with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2015, Russian warplanes have become synonymous with cluster bombs that have destroyed Syrian cities like Aleppo and civilian infrastructure like hospitals. In Chechnya, Russia was similarly accused of indiscriminately attacking civilians, among other alleged war crimes, during the second Chechen conflict from 1999 to 2005.
Russia now appears to be adopting a tactic of siege war against Kharkiv by firing long-range weapons at the city, a senior U.S. defense official said on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity under Pentagon’s basic rules.
U.S. officials estimate that if Russia can take over Kharkiv and also take over Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine, “it will allow them to secede from eastern Ukraine and secure Ukrainian forces in the east and keep them there,” far from the capital. , Kyiv, said a senior US defense official.
Siege tactics often involve bombing a target from a distance, even with civilians stranded on the ground, and disrupting food and ammunition supplies.
Ukrainian authorities have given conflicting reports on the death toll.
Kharkov Mayor Igor Terekhov said earlier Monday that the exact number of victims remains unknown, but that at least 15 Ukrainian fighters and 16 civilians have been injured.
Adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry Anton Gerashchenko wrote in a Facebook post Monday that “Kharkov has just been massacred by alumni” with “dozens killed and hundreds injured,” Reuters reported.
He was referring to Russia’s 122-millimeter BM-21 Grad missiles fired from truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers. A Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty correspondent filmed damage to Russian military equipment, including Grad missile systems, near Kharkiv on Friday.
Authorities imposed a curfew on the city on Monday afternoon.
Kharkiv, a city of 1.5 million people about 25 miles from the Russian border, is emerging as a major fulcrum in Russia’s efforts to move eastward to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
The Post-confirmed videos, published on Monday, of explosions in the northeastern district of Kharkov.
In two tested clips, flashes of light appear in quick succession as the columns of smoke rise. A woman watching the barrage is heard crying in the background of one of the videos.
Russian bombing of Kharkov began to accelerate on Saturday night. After days of fighting, mostly around Kharkov, Russian forces briefly captured the city on Sunday, but hours later were repulsed by Ukrainian fighters.
“Ukrainian forces have been fighting a tough battle, but the worst is yet to come,” Michael Coffman, director of Russian research at CNA, a Virginia-based nonprofit research and analysis organization, told The Post on Sunday. “Russian forces have not done so [yet] tried to take Kharkov, frivolously.
He warned that after facing unexpectedly strong Ukrainian resistance, Russia is likely to step up its air campaign against Kharkiv, a densely packed city.
A senior US defense official said that while Russia’s advance towards Kyiv still seems to be its main effort, the takeover of Kharkiv remains a clear goal.
“There is no safe place in Ukraine at the moment,” Boris Redin, an activist in Kharkov, told The Post on Monday. “And Putin must be stopped because there will be no safe place on the planet. But we stand and we will win. “
Berger, Callan and Lee reported from Washington. Khurshudyan reported from Dnipro, Ukraine. Dan Lamot of Washington contributed to this report.