Zelenskyy has decried Russia’s attacks on civilian targets as a blatant terror campaign, while U.S. President Joe Biden warned on Tuesday that if Russian leader Vladimir Putin is not made to “pay a price” for the invasion, the aggression won’t stop with one country.
Russia renewed its aerial assault Wednesday on Ukraine’s second-largest city in a pounding that lit up the skyline with balls of fire over populated areas, even as both sides said they were ready to resume talks aimed at stopping the fighting, AP reports.
Seven days into Russia’s invasion, a refugee crisis unfolded on the European continent, with the United Nations saying that more than 870,000 people have fled Ukraine and that the number could soon hit 1 million.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported that more than 2,000 civilians have been killed, but that could not immediately be independently verified, and neither side has disclosed its military casualties.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-biggest city, with a population of about 1.5 million, came under bombardment again Wednesday, and a strike reportedly hit a hospital in the country’s north. Meanwhile, a 40-mile-long (64-kilometer) column of Russian tanks and other vehicles stood outside the capital, Kyiv, while invading forces pressed their assault on the strategic port cities of Kherson and Mariupol in the south.
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