The devastating invasion of Ukraine by Russian military forces started a week ago, it has already caused some 900,000 refugees and thousands of deaths, four adults and two children tonight, while the West expands its sanctions on Russia to try to stop the attacks ordered by the Government of Vladimir Putin.
Six people, two of them children, were killed tonight by a shelling in the city of Izium, in the Kharkov region, according to the city’s deputy mayor, Volodymyr Matsokin.
The attack began at 11:59 p.m. local time and hit a multi-storey apartment building. In one of the houses six people died, two of them children, explained the municipal official.
The regional capital, Kharkov, the second largest city in Ukraine, was the target of Russian attacks from early in the morning after the landing of airborne troops with missiles that hit several state buildings and a university.
The bombardment caused four deaths and nine injuries, according to Kiev, which has estimated more than 2,000 civilians killed in Russian attacks since the beginning of the invasion a week ago.
The Russian Army advanced on Tuesday with intense attacks in the south of Ukraine, where it took control of the city of Kherson, with almost 300,000 inhabitants, and where it practically blocks Mariúpol, as well as in the east, where it claims to have seized in good measurement of the coast of the Sea of Azov.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, in a new video message tonight, stated that “nearly nine thousand Russian soldiers have died in a week.”
The Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday admitted the deaths of 498 Russian soldiers, in addition to 1,597 wounded soldiers.
Russian defense spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement that casualties among Ukrainian forces are considerably higher, amounting to 2,870 dead and nearly 3,700 wounded.
The Russian Army advanced on Wednesday with intense attacks in southern Ukraine, where it took control of Kherson, and where it practically blocks Mariupol, as well as in the east, where it claims to have largely seized the Azov Sea coast. All this one day before new negotiations with Kiev.
However, the US Department of Defense reported, for its part, that the advance of a Russian military convoy towards Kiev has been stalled for the last 24 to 36 hours by the Ukrainian resistance and because the Russians would be regrouping and evaluating the situation.
ALMOST ONE MILLION REFUGEES
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has raised to 874 thousand the number of Ukrainians who have fled the war that began a week ago, after the invasion and attacks launched by Russia from various fronts.
This update corresponds to data collected until Tuesday in the neighboring countries of Ukraine, the entity specified.
Another 96,000 people have crossed from the eastern regions of Lugask and Donetsk – under the control of armed separatist groups since 2014 – into Russia.
More than half of the refugees have gone to Poland and some thousands have already arrived in third countries, such as the Czech Republic, where there is a significant Ukrainian community.