Local police officer Valerie, 37, is carrying a child while helping a fleeing family cross a bridge destroyed by artillery on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Wednesday. Russian forces have escalated attacks on crowded cities in what the Ukrainian leader has called a blatant campaign of terror. (Emilio Morenati, Associated Press)
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Kyiv, Ukraine – The number of people sent to flee Ukraine since the Russian invasion exceeded 1 million on Wednesday, the fastest displacement of refugees in a century, the UN said as Russian forces continued to bomb the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. and besieged two strategic seaports.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, published in the Associated Press, more than 2 percent of Ukraine’s population has been forced to leave the country in less than a week. The mass evacuation can be seen in Kharkiv, where residents, desperate to escape falling shells and bombs, crowded the city’s train station and tried to push trains without always knowing where they were headed.
In a video, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Ukrainians to continue the resistance. He vowed that the invaders would have “no peace of mind” and described the Russian soldiers as “confused children who have been used”.
Moscow’s isolation, meanwhile, deepened as much of the world joined the United Nations to demand its withdrawal from Ukraine. And the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has launched an investigation into possible war crimes.
As fighting is taking place on multiple fronts across the country, the British Ministry of Defense said Mariupol, a major city on the Sea of Azov, was surrounded by Russian forces, while the status of another vital port, Kherson, a Black Sea shipbuilding city of 280,000 souls, remains unclear.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces say they have taken full control of Kherson, making it the largest city to fall in the invasion. But a senior U.S. defense official has disputed that.
“Our opinion is that Kherson is a very contested city,” said the official, who requested anonymity.
Zelensky’s cabinet told the Associated Press that it could not comment on the situation in Kherson while fighting continued.
Today we can’t even take the wounded from the streets, from houses and apartments, because the shelling doesn’t stop.
– Vadim Boychenko, Mayor of Mariupol, Ukraine
But Kherson Mayor Igor Kolikhayev said Russian soldiers were in the city and had come to the city administration building. He said he had asked them not to shoot at civilians and to allow crews to collect bodies from the streets.
“I just asked them not to shoot at people,” he said in a statement. “We have no Ukrainian forces in the city, only civilians and people here who want to LIVE.
Mariupol Mayor Vadim Boychenko said the attacks there were relentless.
“Today we cannot even take the wounded from the streets, from houses and apartments, because the shelling does not stop,” he was quoted as saying by Interfax.
Russia announced its military casualties for the first time since the invasion began last week, saying nearly 500 of its troops had been killed and nearly 1,600 wounded. Ukraine did not disclose its own military losses, but said more than 2,000 civilians had died, a claim that could not be independently verified.
In a video address to the nation early Thursday, Zelenski praised his country’s resistance.
“We are a nation that destroyed the enemy’s plans in one week,” he said. “They will not have peace here. They will have no food. They will not have a single quiet moment here.”
He said the fighting was affecting the morale of Russian soldiers who “enter grocery stores and try to find something to eat”.
“These are not superpower warriors,” he said. “These are confused children who have been used.”
Meanwhile, a senior US defense official said a huge convoy of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles appeared to have stopped about 16 miles from Kyiv and had made no real progress in the past few days.
The convoy, which earlier this week appeared ready to attack the capital, was plagued by fuel and food shortages and faced fierce Ukrainian resistance, the official said.
In the far suburbs of Kyiv, volunteer fighters in their 60s ran a checkpoint to try to block Russia’s offensive.
“In my old age, I had to take up arms,” said Andrei Goncharuk, 68. He said the fighters needed more weapons, but “we will kill the enemy and take their weapons.”
Across Ukraine, others crowded the stations, carrying children wrapped in blankets and dragging suitcases on wheels to their new lives as refugees. Shabia Mantu, a spokeswoman for the refugee agency known as UNHCR, said on Wednesday that “at this speed” the eviction from Ukraine could make it the source of “the biggest refugee crisis of the century”.
A large explosion shook the center of Kyiv on Wednesday night in a rocket attack near the southern railway station of the capital. There were no reports of casualties. Thousands of Ukrainians are fleeing the city through the vast railway complex.
Russian forces have struck Kharkiv, Ukraine’s largest city after Kyiv, with about 1.5 million people, in a new round of airstrikes that smashed buildings and lit up the horizon with flames. At least 21 people have been killed and 112 injured in the past day, said Oleg Sinehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional administration.
Several Russian planes were shot down over Kharkiv, according to Alexei Arestovich, Zelensky’s top adviser.
“Today, Kharkov is the 21st century Stalingrad,” Arestovich said, referring to what is considered one of the most heroic episodes in Russian history, the city’s five-month defense against the Nazis during World War II.
From his bunker in the basement, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov told the BBC: “The city is united and we will stand firm.”
Russian attacks, many with rockets, blew up the roof of a five-story Kharkov district police building and set fire to the top floor, as well as hit the intelligence center and the university building, according to officials and videos and photos released by the State Emergency Service. Ukraine. Authorities said residential buildings were also hit, but did not give details.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog warned that the fighting posed a threat to Ukraine’s 15 nuclear reactors.
Rafael Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency said the war was “the first time a military conflict has taken place among the facilities of a large, established nuclear energy program” and said he was “seriously concerned”.
Russia has already taken control of the decommissioned Chernobyl power plant, the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986.
In New York, the UN General Assembly voted to demand that Russia stop its offensive and withdraw all troops immediately, with world powers and small island nations condemning Moscow. The vote was 141 against and 5 against with 35 abstentions.
The resolutions of the assembly are not legally binding, but they can reflect and influence world opinion.
The vote came after the 193-member assembly convened its first extraordinary session in 1997. The only countries to vote with Russia were Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Eritrea. Cuba spoke in defense of Moscow, but ultimately abstained.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN, Sergei Kislitsya, said Russian forces “came to Ukrainian soil not only to kill some of us … they came to deprive Ukraine of its very right to exist.” He added: “The crimes are so barbaric that they are difficult to understand.”
Russia has stepped up its rhetoric. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reminded the world of the country’s huge nuclear arsenal when he said in an interview with Al-Jazeera that “World War III can only be nuclear.”
In the northern city of Chernihiv, two cruise missiles hit a hospital, according to the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, which quoted health administration chief Sergei Pivovar as saying authorities were working to determine the number of victims.
In other developments:
- A second round of talks aimed at ending the fighting was expected on Thursday, but there seemed to be little in common between the two sides.
- Oil prices continued to rise, reaching $ 112 a barrel, the highest level since 2014.
- Russia has become even more economically isolated, as Airbus and Boeing have said they will cut off spare parts and technical support to the country’s airlines, a major blow. Airbus and Boeing represent the vast majority or passenger fleet of Russia.
Contribution: Mstislav Chernov, Sergei Gritz, Robert Burns, Eric Tucker, Francesca Ebel, Josef Federman, Andrew Drake, Lorne Cook, Edith M. Lederer, Jennifer Peltz and others.