An Indian student has been reportedly killed and no fewer than six people also wounded in a blast that destroyed a government building in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city on Tuesday.
More than 350 civilians, including 14 children, have been killed during the invasion which started last Thursday, according to Ukraine, while more than a half a million people have fled the country.
According to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service, the blast destroyed a government building located in Freedom Square.
Russia shelled the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv as it pressed on with its invasion Tuesday, defying mounting global pressure that saw a war crimes probe opened against Moscow, sanctions smash its economy and FIFA ban it from the World Cup.
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Further, the European Union has added top Kremlin-linked oligarchs and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman to its sanctions blacklist.
After their first talks since the war started failed to secure a breakthrough Monday, Russia continued to target residential areas and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for a global ban on Russian planes and ships.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba shared a similar video on Twitter showing an enormous explosion in the eastern city of Kharkiv’s Freedom Square.
While calling the world to “isolate Russia fully”, the Minister wrote: “Barbaric Russian missile strikes on the central Freedom Square and residential districts of Kharkiv. Putin is unable to break Ukraine down. He commits more war crimes out of fury, murders innocent civilians.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday described Russian shelling of his country’s second city as a war crime and said defending the capital from Moscow’s army was a top priority.
The UN’s refugee agency said an estimated one million people had been displaced inside Ukraine by the Russian invasion, in addition to hundreds of thousands who have fled abroad.
“We still don’t have reliable figures regarding the number of people displaced inside Ukraine but we estimate that it has to be about one million people who have fled internally or who are currently on a train, a bus or in a car trying to get to a safety,” Karolina Lindholm Billing, UNHCR representative to Ukraine, told a press conference in Stockholm.