The port city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine is under constant attack from the Russian military, and Ukrainian authorities have been unable to evacuate the injured.
While the city of Kherson, on the Black Sea in western Ukraine, was completely besieged by Russian troops.
"We are fighting, we do not stop defending our homeland," said Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko in a live broadcast on Ukrainian TV, Wednesday (2/3), as quoted by Reuters.
However, Russian troops managed to break into Ukraine's second largest city on Wednesday (2/3) and sparked direct clashes in the streets of Kharkiv, following Moscow's incessant airstrikes.
At least 21 people have been killed and 112 injured in Russian military shelling in the past 24 hours, the head of the Kharkiv Region Oleg Synegubov said Wednesday.
Since Russian troops entered Ukraine last week to accomplish President Vladimir Putin's mission to overthrow the pro-Western government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, hundreds of civilians have been reported killed.
Russian troops have carried out heavy bombing and besieged urban centers, but Ukraine insists no major cities have fallen into the hands of the red bear country.
"Russian airborne forces landed in Kharkiv and attacked a local hospital," the Ukrainian military said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app, as reported by Channel News Asia. "There is an ongoing battle between the occupiers and Ukraine".
Russia attacked a residential building in Kharkiv on Tuesday (1/3) killing eight people. Ukraine drew comparisons to the massacre of civilians in Sarajevo in the 1990s and condemnation of what Zelenskyy called "war crimes".
A fire broke out Wednesday at a flight school barracks in Kharkiv after a Russian air strike, according to Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to Ukraine's interior minister.
"Practically, there are no areas left in Kharkiv where artillery shells have not been fired," he said in a statement on Telegram. Kharkiv, a mostly Russian-speaking city near the Russian border, has a population of about 1.4 million.
