Ukraine has claimed that more than 2,000 of its civilians have been killed during the first week of the Russian invasion.
The country’s emergency service also said that hundreds of structures including transport facilities, hospitals, kindergartens and homes have been destroyed since the conflict began.
“Children, women and defence forces are losing their lives every hour,” it said in a statement.
The figure was announced as urban centres were increasingly under attack from Russian forces, The mass shelling several cities continued on Wednesday, it was claimed, including Kharkiv, Kherson and Mariupol.
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky claimed on Wednesday that the attacks were an attempt to “erase our history, erase our country. erase us all”.
The growing death toll in an increasingly bloody conflict was confirmed by Moscow on Wednesday afternoon, when Russia said it had so far lost 498 soldiers in the war, the first time it had given a figure.
One attack on Kharkiv, a key Russian target in northeastern Ukraine, is reported to have killed at least 21 people and more than 100 people Russian paratroopers injured, officials said.
The region’s deputy governor, Roman Semenukha, claimed that Russian forces launched a missile into the city council building.
“Kharkiv is a Russian-speaking city. Every fourth person in Kharkiv has relatives in the Russian Federation. But the city’s attitude to Russia today is completely different to what it ever was before,” its mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said in an online video statement.
“We never expected this could happen: total destruction, annihilation, genocide against the Ukrainian people - this is unforgivable.”
Oleksiy Arestovich, a top Ukraine presidential adviser, said: “Kharkiv today is the Stalingrad of the 21st century.” Russian attacks, many with missiles, blew the roof off Kharkiv’s five-story regional police building and set the top floor on fire, and also hit the intelligence headquarters and a university building, according to officials and videos and photos released by Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. Officials residential buildings were also hit, but did not provide details. Kharkiv has a population of about 1.5 million.
The southeastern port city of Mariupol also suffered significant casualties and a water outage as it faces continued bombardment from Russian forces, its mayor said on Wednesday.
“The enemy occupying forces of the Russian Federation have done everything to block the exit of civilians from the city of half a million people,” Mayor Vadym Boichenko told Ukrainian broadcasters.
He did not provide an exact number of casualties.
In the northern city of Chernihiv, two cruise missiles hit a hospital, according to the Ukrainian UNIAN news agency, which quoted the health administration chief, Serhiy Pivovar, as saying authorities were working to determine the casualty toll. At least one teenager died and two more were wounded by apparent Russian shelling. The three boys were rushed to a hospital. One had lost his legs in the attack and died soon after arriving, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. The three had been playing football near a school when the shelling hit. The attacks came a day after Russia, intensifying its attacks on cities, bombed Kharkiv’s central square — where at least six people were reported killed — and struck Kyiv’s main TV tower, where authorities said five died.
Kyiv’s nearby Babi Yar Holocaust memorial also came under fire, but the main monument was not damaged.Ukrainian authorities are also investigating possible Russian rocket or artillery fire on an airport in the Black Sea port of Odesa today, the country’s deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar said.
Meanwhile, Kyiv’s mayor earlier warned that Russian troops are drawing closer to the Ukrainian capital as thousands continue to flee the city.
“We are preparing and will defend Kyiv!,” Vitali Klitschko wrote in an online post. “Kyiv stands and will stand.”
