KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian strikes pounded the central square in Ukraine’s second-largest city and other civilian targets Tuesday and a 40-mile convoy of tanks and other vehicles threatened the capital. Ukraine’s embattled president accused Moscow of resorting to terror tactics to press Europe’s largest ground war in generations.
With the Kremlin increasingly isolated by tough economic sanctions that have tanked the ruble currency, Russian troops advanced on Ukraine’s two biggest cities on Day 6 of an invasion that has shaken the 21st century world order. In Kharkiv, a strategic eastern city with a population of about 1.5 million, at least six people were killed when the region’s Soviet-era administrative building was hit. Explosions tore through residential areas, and a maternity ward relocated to an underground shelter.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the targeted attack on Kharkiv’s main square “frank, undisguised terror,” blaming a Russian missile and calling it a war crime. “Nobody will forgive. Nobody will forget. … This is state terrorism of the Russian Federation.”
In an emotional appeal to the European Parliament later, Zelenskyy said: “We are fighting also to be equal members of Europe. I believe that today we are showing everybody that is what we are … We have proven that, as a minimum, we are the same as you.”
In addition to the strikes on cities, reports have emerged that Moscow has used cluster bombs on three populated areas. If confirmed, that would represent a worrying new level of brutality in the war — and could lead to even further isolation in Russia.
Already, with Western powers sending weapons to Ukraine and driving a global squeeze of Russia’s economy, President Vladimir Putin’s options have diminished as he seeks to redraw the global map — and pull Ukraine’s western-leaning democracy back into Moscow’s orbit.
The Kremlin denied Tuesday that it has used such munitions and insisted again that its forces only have struck military targets — despite evidence documented by AP reporters of shelling of homes, schools and hospitals.
Unbowed by Western condemnation, Russian officials upped their threats of escalation — days after raising the specter of a nuclear attack. The Russian defense minister vowed Tuesday to press the offensive until it achieves its goals, while a top Kremlin official warned that the West’s “economic war” against Russia could turn into a “real one.”
A first round of talks Monday between Ukraine and Russia yielded no stop in the fighting, though both sides agreed to another meeting in coming days.
Throughout the country, many Ukrainian civilians spent another night huddled in shelters, basements or corridors. More than a half-million people have fled the country, and the U.N. human rights office said Tuesday that it has recorded the deaths of 136 civilians, including 13 children. The real toll is likely far higher.
“It is a nightmare, and it seizes you from the inside very strongly. This cannot be explained with words,” said Kharkiv resident Ekaterina Babenko, taking shelter in a basement with neighbors for a fifth straight day. “We have small children, elderly people and frankly speaking it is very frightening.”
A Ukrainian military official said Belarusian troops joined the war Tuesday in the Chernihiv region, without providing details. But just before that, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his country had no plans to join the fight.
The precision bombing of Kharkiv’s Freedom Square — Ukraine’s largest plaza, and the nucleus of public life for the city — was a turning point for many Ukrainians, brazen evidence that the Russian invasion wasn’t just about hitting military targets but also about breaking their spirits.
The strike blew out or shattered windows and walls of buildings that ring the massive central square, which was piled high with debris and dust. Inside one building, chunks of plaster were scattered, and doors, ripped from their hinges, lay across hallways.
“People are under the ruins, we have pulled out bodies,” said Yevhen Vasylenko, representative of the Emergency Situations Ministry in Kharkiv region. In addition to the six killed, he said 20 were wounded in the strike.
