Conflicts & War

Zelenskyy says Russia aims to erase Ukraine history, Kharkiv attack escalates

(Update 1: adds UN resolution, delayed peace talks, Russian death toll)

Kyiv, Mar 2 (EFE).- Russian paratroopers have landed in Kharkiv where deadly street battles erupted, while Russian troops made advances in the south on the seventh day of an invasion that Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday aimed to erase his country’s history.

Russian military attacks on Ukraine’s second-largest city, near the Russian border, killed 21 civilians and injured 112 others overnight, the regional governor Oleh Synyehubov said in a Telegram post, adding that Russian forces had attacked a military hospital.

Renewed Russian shelling on Wednesday morning struck several buildings, including a university, and killed four people, emergency services said.

Kharkiv, a largely-Russian speaking city, has a population of around 1.4 million.

Vladimir Putin’s military assault also intensified in Ukraine’s south, where the Russian defense ministry claimed to have captured the city of Kherson on the Dnieper river, which connects it to the Black Sea.

Kherson’s mayor Ihor Kolykhaiev called for a humanitarian corridor out of the city to evacuate the wounded and deliver food and medicine.

In an earlier Facebook post, he claimed that the city was “still Ukraine” but said that the town hall had been attacked while he and his team were inside. He urged citizens not to leave their homes and said the city “needed a miracle.”

Authorities in Mariupol, strategically located on the Black Sea near territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014, said the city was under constant Russian bombardment, while the deputy mayor said he feared “hundreds” of civilians have been killed.

‘ERASE US ALL’

Zelenskyy, who remains in Kyiv, said Wednesday morning that Russia’s military had orders to erase Ukraine’s history, a day after a missile struck near the Holocaust memorial to Babyn Yar on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital where, in 1941, German Nazi forces murdered over 33,000 Jews in just two nights.

“They don’t know a thing about Kyiv, about our history. But they all have orders to erase our history, erase our country, erase us all,” Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, added.

Zelenskyy claimed that over 6,000 Russian troops had been killed since Moscow launched its invasion six days ago.

Russia’s defense ministry, meanwhile, has said that 498 Russian soldiers have died in addition to 1,597 wounded, the first time Moscow has acknowledged that it has suffered casualties since the invasion began on Thursday.

Scheduled peace talks between Ukrainian officials and a delegation from Moscow – the second meeting this week – have been postponed to Thursday, Russian media reported.

A previous meeting held near the Belarus border failed to secure a ceasefire but concluded that further discussions would take place.

INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS, MOSCOW THREATS

In the first emergency meeting since 1997, the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution condemning the Russian invasion, with the backing of 141 of the 193 UN member states.

The document denounced Moscow’s aggression and demanded an immediate end to hostilities as well as the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.

The non-binding resolution received only five votes against – Russia, Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Eritrea – and 35 abstentions, most notably from India, Pakistan, Iran and China.

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