KYIV, Ukraine — Russia renewed its assault on 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 new devastating war in Europe, according to AP.
The escalation of attacks on crowded cities followed an initial round of talks between outgunned Ukraine and nuclear power Russia on Monday that resulted in only a promise to meet again. It was not clear when new talks might take place — or what they would yield. Ukraine’s leader earlier said Russia must stop bombing before another meeting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has decried Russia’s bombardment as a blatant terror campaign, while US President Joe Biden warned on Tuesday that if the Russian leader didn’t “pay a price” for the invasion, the aggression wouldn’t stop with one country.
On Wednesday, a Russian strike hit the regional police and intelligence headquarters in Kharkiv, a city of about 1.5 million, killing four people and wounding several, the state emergency service of Ukraine said. It added that residential buildings were also being hit, but did not provide further details.
The attack followed a day after one in Kharkiv’s central square that killed at least six people and shocked many Ukrainians for hitting at the center of life in a major city. A Russian strike also targeted a TV tower in the capital of Kyiv.
Roughly 874,000 people have fled Ukraine and the UN refugee agency warned the number could cross the 1 million mark soon. Countless others have taken shelter underground.
The overall death toll from the seven-day war is not clear, with neither Russia nor Ukraine releasing the number of troops lost. The UN human rights office said it has recorded 136 civilian deaths, though the actual toll is surely far higher.
Ukrainian authorities said five people were killed in the TV tower strike, which also hit the site of the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial. A spokesman for the memorial said a Jewish cemetery at the site, where Nazi occupiers killed more than 33,000 Jews over two days in 1941, was damaged.
Russia previously told people living near transmission facilities used by Ukraine’s intelligence agency to leave their homes. But Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed Wednesday that the airstrike on the TV tower did not hit any residential buildings. He did not address the reported deaths or the damage to Babi Yar.
Zelenskyy, who called the strike on the square in Kharkiv a war crime that the world would never forget, expressed outrage Wednesday at the attack on Babi Yar and concern that other historically significant and religious sites, such as St. Sophia’s Cathedral, could be targeted. Shelling earlier hit the town of Uman, a significant pilgrimage site for Hasidic Jews.
“This is beyond humanity,” Zelenskyy said in a speech posted on Facebook. “They have orders to erase our history, our country and all of us.”
Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, called on Jews around the world to protest the invasion.
Even as Russia pressed its assault, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that a delegation would be ready later in the day to meet Ukrainian officials.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also said his country was ready — but noted that Russia’s demands have not changed and that he wouldn’t accept any ultimatums. Neither side said where the talks might take place.
As the war wears on, Russia finds itself 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. Leading Russian bank Sberbank announced Wednesday that it is pulling out of European markets amid the tightening Western sanctions.
In Washington, Biden used his first State of the Union address Tuesday to highlight the resolve of a reinvigorated Western alliance that has worked to rearm the Ukrainian military and adopt those tough sanctions.
