Russia claims it has seized port city of Kherson

Police officers remove the body of a passerby killed in Tuesday’s airstrike that hit Kyiv’s main television tower, on Wednesday. Pics/AFP

Russia said it had seized its biggest city yet in Ukraine on Wednesday, while stepping up its lethal bombardment of the main cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, which its invasion force has so far failed to tame in the face of strong Ukrainian resistance. With Moscow having failed in its aim to swiftly overthrow Ukraine's government after nearly a week, Western countries are worried that it is switching to new, far more violent tactics to blast its way into cities it had expected to easily take.

Moscow said on Wednesday it had captured Kherson, a port city and a provincial capital of around a quarter of a million people on the southern front. There was no immediate word from Ukraine but the regional governor had said overnight that it was surrounded, under fire, and Russian troops were looting shops and pharmacies.

It would be the biggest city to fall so far, with a strategic position astride the Dnieper River that divides Ukraine down the middle. Russia was carrying out intensive air and artillery strikes, especially on Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mariupol and the eastern city of Chernihiv. Russia said it has surrounded port of Mariupol in a ring around the entire coast of the Sea of Azov. Mariupol mayor said the city had been under intense shelling since late Tuesday and was unable to evacuate its wounded.

Refugees coming from Ukraine walk next to shelter tents at the Ukrainian-Romanian border in Siret, on Wednesday

But on the other two main fronts in the east and north, Russia so far has little to show for its advance, with Ukraine's two biggest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, holding out in the face of increasingly intense bombardment.

Airstrikes in Kyiv, Kharkiv

Kharkiv in particular has come under intense shelling over the past two days, with more pictures overnight showing devastation in the city centre. The regional governor said at least 21 people had been killed by shelling in the past 24 hours. Emergency services said four more people were killed on Wednesday morning. In Kyiv, the capital of 3 million people where residents have been sheltering at night in the underground metro, Russia blasted the main television tower near a Holocaust memorial on Tuesday, killing bystanders.

‘End bombings, then we talk'

Earlier, a tired and unshaven Volodymyr Zelenskiy, wearing green battle fatigues in a heavily guarded government compound, told Reuters and CNN in an interview that the bombing must stop for talks to end the war. "It's necessary to at least stop bombing people, just stop the bombing and then sit down at the negotiating table."

A member of territorial defence wipes his face in the backyard of a house that was damaged by a Russian airstrike, in Gorenka, outside the capital city of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Wednesday. Pic/AFP

Referring to the Tuesday shelling in Kyiv next to Babyn Yar - the site of a World War Two massacre of tens of thousands of Jews by German occupation troops and Ukrainian auxiliaries - Zelenskiy said, "This strike proves that for many people in Russia our Kyiv is absolutely foreign. 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."

A Kremlin spokesperson said a Russian delegation would be ready on Wednesday evening to resume talks with Ukrainian officials. There was no immediate word from Ukrainian authorities about their plans.

Biden's message to Russia

US President Joe Biden assailed Russian President Vladimir Putin, barred Russian flights from American airspace and led Democratic and Republican lawmakers in a rare display of unity on Tuesday in a State of the Union speech dominated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In a deviation from his prepared remarks, Biden said of Putin: "He has no idea what's coming."

Biden vowed to make his Russian counterpart "pay a price" for the invasion. "Throughout our history we've learned this lesson - when dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos," Biden said. "They keep moving. And the costs and threats to America and the world keep rising."

He also warned the country's oligarchs that the Department of Justice was assembling a task force to investigate any crimes they committed. "We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets," he said. "We are coming for your ill-begotten gains."

Meanwhile, Apple, Exxon, Boeing and other firms joined an exodus of companies around the world from the Russian market, which has left Moscow financially and diplomatically isolated since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion last week.

Sanctions

The UK has piled on further sanctions against Russia and also imposed a first wave of punitive measures against Belarus for its role in Ukraine invasion. Russian ships have been banned from British ports in a fresh raft of UK sanctions against Moscow announced on Tuesday. The ban includes any vessels owned or operated by anyone connected to Russia.

Tech diaspora unite to help besieged homeland

Ukrainians working at Western tech firms are banding together to help their besieged homeland, aiming to knock down disinformation websites, encourage Russians to turn against their government and speed delivery of medical supplies. They are seeking, through email campaigns and online petitions, to persuade firms such as internet security company Cloudflare Inc, Alphabet Inc's Google and Amazon.com Inc to do more to counter Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "Companies should try to isolate Russia as much as possible, as soon as possible," said Olexiy Oryeshko, a staff software engineer at Google and a Ukrainian American. "Sanctions aren't enough." He was one of nine tech activists interviewed by Reuters who are of Ukrainian heritage or are Ukrainian immigrants and are responding to a call by Kyiv to form a volunteer "IT army". They're appealing to cybersecurity firms in particular to drop Russian clients, especially publishers of what they say is disinformation. If that happens, the publishers would be more vulnerable to online attacks.

8,74,000
No. of Ukranians who fled the country in past one week

25
No. of people killed in Kharkiv since late Tuesday