Vladimir Putin's troops have stormed the council building of Kherson with claims that the first major city in Ukraine has fallen to the Russian army.
The mayor of the Ukrainian city of Kherson, Igor Kolykhayev said Russian troops were in the streets and had forced their way into the city council building on Wednesday.
Kolykhayev urged Russian soldiers not to shoot at civilians and publicly called on them to walk through the streets only in daylight and in ones and twos.
"We do not have the armed forces in the city, only civilians and people who want to live here" he said in a statement, also asking people to obey the Russian invaders.
It came after a Russian official said troops have taken the port city of Kherson - a claim that the Ukrainian military had denied.
The city is under Russian soldiers' "complete control", Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said earlier on Wednesday.
The UK Ministry of Defence said the military situation in the city remains unclear, although conceded that Russian troops have entered the city.
He said the city's civilian infrastructure, essential facilities and transport are operating as usual and that there are no shortages of food or essential goods.
Maj Gen Konashenkov said talks between the Russian commanders, city administrations and regional authorities on how to maintain order in the city were under way on.
A senior US defence official said that they have seen statements that the Russians have taken Kherson, but that the Ukrainian military is rejecting that claim.
"Our view is that Kherson is very much a contested city at this point," said the official.
At the same time Ukraine's second biggest city, Kharkiv, has suffered heavy bombardment as Russia's week-long invasion was denounced by the United Nations in a historic vote and dozens of countries referred Moscow to be probed for potential war crimes.
The biggest attack on a European state since 1945 has caused over 870,000 people to flee, a barrage of sanctions against Russia, and stoked fears of wider conflict in the West unthought-of for decades.
The incursion has yet to overthrow the government in Kyiv but thousands are thought to have died or been injured and it could cause another deep hit to the global economy still emerging from the coronavirus pandemic.
Bombing of Kharkiv, a city of 1.5 million people in eastern Ukraine, has left its centre a wasteland of ruined buildings and debris.
"The Russian 'liberators' have come," one Ukrainian volunteer said sarcastically, as he and three others strained to carry the dead body of a man wrapped in a bedsheet out of the ruins on a main square.
A UN resolution reprimanding Moscow was supported by 141 of the assembly's 193 members, passed in a rare emergency session, a symbolic victory for Ukraine that increases Moscow's international isolation.
