Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – More than 1 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion of the fastest refugee displacement of the century, the United Nations said on Thursday as Russian forces continued to bomb the country’s second-largest city. and besieged two strategic seaports.
The estimate, released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to the Associated Press on Wednesday, reached more than 2% of Ukraine’s population, who were forced to leave the country in less than a week. The mass evacuation could be seen in Kharkiv, where residents, desperate to escape falling shells and bombs, crowded the city’s train station and huddled against trains, not always knowing where they were headed.
During the night, reporters from the Associated Press in Kyiv heard at least one explosion before videos of obvious strikes in the capital began to circulate.
Russia’s Defense Ministry says it has smashed a backup broadcasting center in the Lisa Gora area, about 7 kilometers (4 miles) south of the government headquarters. It says unspecified precision weapons were used and that there were no casualties or damage to residential buildings.
A statement from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not mention the strikes, saying only that Russian forces were “regrouping” and “trying to reach the northern outskirts” of the city.
“Progress towards Kyiv has not been very organized and now they are more or less blocked,” military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer told the Moscow AP.
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 deepens as much of the world opposes it at the United Nations to ask to withdraw from Ukraine. And the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has launched an investigation into possible war crimes.
Felgenhauer said Russia’s economy was already suffering and that there could be a “serious internal political crisis” if Russian President Vladimir Putin did not find a way to end the war quickly.
“There is no real money to fight this war,” he said, adding that “if Putin and the military are unable to end this campaign very quickly and victoriously, they are in a pickle.”
As fighting continues on many fronts in Ukraine, the British Ministry of Defense said Mariupol, a major city on the Sea of Azov, is surrounded by Russian forces, while the status of another vital port, Kherson, a Black Sea shipbuilding city of 280,000, remains unclear.
The Ukrainian military said that Russian forces “have not achieved the main goal of capturing Mariupol” in a statement that did not mention Kherson.
Putin’s forces claimed to have taken full control of Kherson, which would be the largest city to fall during the invasion. A senior U.S. defense official has disputed this.
“Our opinion is that Kherson is a very contested city,” said the official, who requested anonymity.
Zelensky’s office told the AP that they could not comment on the situation in Kherson while the fighting was still going on.
Kherson Mayor Igor Kolikhaev 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.
“We have no Ukrainian forces in the city, only civilians and people here who want to LIVE,” he said in a statement later posted on Facebook.
The mayor said that Kherson will maintain a strict curfew from 8 pm to 6 am and will limit traffic in the city to food and medicine deliveries. The city will also require pedestrians to walk in groups of no more than two, obey commands to stop and not “provoke troops.”
“The flag flying over us is Ukrainian,” he wrote. “And to stay that way, those requirements have to be met.”
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 has announced its military casualties for the first time in the war, saying nearly 500 of its soldiers have 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 figure that cannot be confirmed independently.
Ukraine’s military headquarters said in a Facebook post that Russian forces had suffered about 9,000 casualties in the fighting. It is unclear whether this figure includes both killed and wounded soldiers.
It also says Russia has lost 217 tanks and about 30 fighter jets and helicopters. The figures could not be confirmed independently.
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. “There will be no 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 “go into 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 U.S. defense official said a huge Russian convoy of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles appeared to have stopped about 25 kilometers (16 miles) from Kyiv and had made no real progress in the past few days.
The convoy, which earlier in the week appeared ready to attack the capital, was plagued by fuel and food shortages, the official said.
In the far suburbs of Kyiv, volunteers 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.
In an email, UN refugee spokesman Jong-Gedini-Williams told the AP that the number of refugees exceeded 1 million at midnight in Central Europe, based on data collected by national authorities.
Shabia Mantu, another spokesman for the agency, said “at this speed” the eviction from Ukraine could make it the source of “the biggest refugee crisis of the century”.
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 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.
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Isachenkov and Litvinova report from Moscow; Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Mstislav Chernov in Mariupol, Ukraine; Sergei Grits in Odessa, Ukraine; Francesca Ebel, Josef Federman and Andrew Drake in Kyiv; Jamie Keaton in Geneva; Lynn Berry, Robert Burns and Eric Tucker in Washington; Edith M. Lederer and Jennifer Peltz at the United Nations; and other PA journalists from around the world contributed to this report.
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Follow the PA’s coverage of the crisis in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine