Russia strikes Kharkiv government HQ as more forces join column outside Kyiv

Russian forces have bombarded the regional government building in Ukraine’s second city, killing at least 10 civilians, officials have said, as a huge armoured column rolling towards the capital, Kyiv, raised fears Russia may resort to pulverising civilian areas.

© AP Photo/Pavel Dorogoy Ukrainian emergency service personnel work outside the damaged City Hall building following shelling, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Russia on Tuesday stepped up shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, pounding civilian targets there. Casualties mounted and reports emerged that more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers were killed after Russian artillery recently hit a military base in Okhtyrka, a city between Kharkiv and Kyiv, the capital.

Officials in Moscow said on Tuesday a second round of ceasefire talks would be held on Wednesday, but the defence ministry urged Kyiv residents and people “involved by nationalists in provocations against Russia” to leave the city before what it called “high-precision strikes” that it claimed would be aimed at security service targets.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba accused the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, of “murdering innocent civilians” as he tweeted video of the huge explosion in Kharkiv’s Freedom Square, calling it a “barbaric missile strike”.

The president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said repeated Russian missile strikes on Kharkiv – including the latest on the central administration building, which left at least 35 wounded - amounted to state terrorism and a war crime. “Evil, armed with rockets, bombs and artillery, must be stopped immediately, destroyed economically,” he said.

© Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP This handout photo released by Ukrainian Emergency Service shows emergency service personnel inspecting the damage inside the City Hall building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Russian shelling pounded civilian targets in Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, Tuesday and a 40-mile convoy of tanks and other vehicles threatened the capital — tactics Ukraine's embattled president said were designed to force him into concessions in Europe's largest ground war in generations.

In an emotional address to the European parliament, Zelenskiy reiterated his country’s wish to join the EU, saying Ukraine “has a desire to see our children alive – I think it is a fair one. We are fighting for survival. We are fighting to be equal members of Europe. We are exactly the same as you are.”

More than 70 Ukrainian soldiers were also killed in the eastern city of Okhtyrka, between Kharkiv and Kyiv, in a Russian missile strike on a military base, local officials said, giving conflicting accounts of when the attack on the barracks took place.

On the sixth day of fighting since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, the failure of its armed forces, amid continuing stiff resistance, to capture a single major city has led western countries to warn that commanders may increasingly bomb civilian areas.

© AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu Hundreds of beds are placed inside a sports hall to accommodate Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russian invasion at the border crossing town of Medyka, Poland, on Tuesday, March 1, 2022. All day long, as trains and buses bring people fleeing Ukraine to the safety of Polish border towns, they carry not just Ukrainian fleeing a homeland under attack but large numbers of other citizens who had made Ukraine their home and whose fates too are now uncertain.

International sanctions and global financial isolation, which have had a sudden and devastating impact on Russia’s economy, with the rouble in freefall and long queues outside banks, may further increase the Kremlin’s frustration, observers have said.

“The Russian advance on Kyiv has made little progress over the past 24 hours, probably as a result of continuing logistical difficulties,” the British defence ministry said in a military intelligence update on Tuesday.

But it warned that the apparent shift in Russian tactics would inevitably put Ukrainian civilians at much greater peril, saying: “The use of heavy artillery in densely populated urban areas greatly increases the risk of civilian casualties.”

At least 136 civilians have been killed, including 13 children, and 400 have been injured since the start of the invasion last week, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said on Tuesday, adding that the real toll would almost certainly be much higher.

© REUTERS/Yves Herman President of the European Commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen, addresses the European Parliament special session to debate its response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Brussels, Belgium March 1, 2022.

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said allegations of Russian strikes on civilian targets and the use of cluster and vacuum bombs were fakes, adding it was “out of the question” that sanctions would “force us to change our position” on the invasion, which Russia calls a “special operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine.

The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, said at a press conference in Warsaw with his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki, that it was clear Putin was “prepared to use barbaric and indiscriminate tactics”.

The eastern city of Kharkiv had already come under heavy fire on Monday, with at least nine people – including three children – killed and 37 injured by missile strikes hitting civilian areas. “It’s not just a war, this is a massacre of Ukrainian people,” the mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said.

One Okhtyrka resident, Igor, said the city had been attacked every day since 24 February hitting not just military but also civilian targets, sometimes with thermobaric rockets. “It’s awful – I feel angry and desperate,” he told the Guardian.

© REUTERS/Lukasz Glowala People fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, arrive in Vysne Nemecke, Slovakia, March 1, 2022.

Human rights groups and Ukraine’s ambassador to the US have accused Russia of using cluster bombs and vacuum bombs, weapons that are normally banned in civilian areas. The US said it had no confirmation of their use.

The key south-eastern city of Mariupol, which separatists have said they aim to encircle with 24 hours, was without electricity following multiple missile attacks from advancing Russian forces, while reports said the southern city of Kherson was surrounded.

Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, called on Russia to end the war, calling it “totally unacceptable”, but added that “as a defensive alliance” the organisation would not send troops or combat jets to avoid becoming part of the conflict.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have abandoned their homes to escape the Russian advance and more than 500,000 have fled the country, according to the UN refugee agency, with thousands await passage at European border crossings.

Ukraine’s general staff said Russian losses since the attack, the largest invasion of a European country since the end of the cold war, included 5,710 personnel, 29 destroyed and damaged aircraft and 198 tanks. The figures could not be verified.

The escalation in shelling and missile strikes in Ukraine’s urban areas came as a Russian military column gathering to the north of Kyiv was estimated to be 40 miles (64km) long, more than double its size three days ago.

“For the enemy, Kyiv is the key target,” Zelenskiy said in an overnight video message. “We did not let them break the defence of the capital, and they send saboteurs to us … We will neutralise them all.”

© REUTERS/Gleb Garanich A car loaded with antitank obstacles is parked near an installation in Independence Square in central Kyiv, Ukraine March 1, 2022. An installation reads: "I love Ukraine".

According to the US satellite company Maxar, the Russian armoured convoy was 17 miles (25km) from the centre of the Ukrainian capital, a city normally home to 3 million. US intelligence has warned Russia was attempting to encircle Kyiv.

Satellite photos also showed deployments of ground forces and ground attack helicopter units in southern Belarus, although the country’s pro-Russia president, Alexander Lukashenko, said on Tuesday he had no plans to join the invasion.

US senators warned overnight of a “long and bloody fight ahead” after receiving classified briefings evoking the spectre of a protracted battle over the capital and “street to street combat” against Russian forces.

As an unprecedented raft of international sanctions began to bite, including crippling measures against Russia’s central bank preventing it from using its $630bn of foreign reserves to prop up the rouble, the oil giant Shell became the latest western firm to announce it was pulling out of Russia.

BP and Norway’s Equinor have also said they are quitting the country, which relies on oil and gas for export earnings, while multiple major banks, airlines and carmakers have ended partnerships, halted shipments and denounced the Russian invasion.

The shipping group Maersk followed other international transport groups on Tuesday in saying it was suspending all container shipments to and from Russia except those containing food, medical and humanitarian supplies.

The French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said the sanctions would “bring about the collapse of the Russian economy”, adding that the west was “waging total economic and financial war on Russia”.

The EU late on Monday added top Kremlin-linked oligarchs, including Igor Sechin, head of the state oil giant Rosneft; Nikolay Tokarev of pipeline group Transneft, the metals magnate Alexei Mordashov, tycoon Alisher Usmanov and businessman Gennady Timchenko, to its sanctions blacklist.

In the cultural arena, three major film studios, Sony, Disney and Warner Bros, said they were pausing cinema releases in Russia, and YouTube is in the process of blocking Russia’s state-backed news channels RT and Sputnik in Europe.

Russia has also been barred from most major sporting competitions, while World Taekwondo has stripped Putin himself, who is passionate about martial arts and his athletic prowess, of his honorary black belt because of the invasion.