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Russian troops were in the centre of the Ukrainian port of Kherson on Thursday after a day of conflicting claims over whether Moscow had captured a major urban centre for the first time in its eight-day invasion.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had captured Kherson on Wednesday but an adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy responded that Ukrainian forces continued to defend the Black Sea port of about 250,000 people.
“We are a people who broke the enemy’s plans in a week,” Mr Zelenskiy said in a video address. “These plans had taken years to write – they are mean, with hatred for our country, for our people.”
The capture of the strategic southern provincial capital, where the Dnipro River flows into the Black Sea, would be the first significant urban centre to fall since Moscow launched its invasion on February 24th.
Russian forces have yet to overthrow the government in Kyiv but thousands are reported to have died or been injured and more than a million people have fled Ukraine amid the biggest attack on a European state since 1945.
Russia’s attack has led to a barrage of international sanctions that threaten the global economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, and stoked fears of wider conflict as Western countries send arms to help the Ukrainian military.
Kherson mayor Igor Kolykhayev said late on Wednesday that Russian troops were in the streets and had entered the council building. He called on civilians to walk through the streets only in daylight and in ones and twos.
“There were armed visitors in the city executive committee today,” he said in a statement. “I didn’t make any promises to them ... I just asked them not to shoot people.”
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” that is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its neighbour’s military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.
It denies targeting civilians although there have been widespread reports of civilian casualties and the shelling of residential areas.
Bombing in Kharkiv, a city of 1.5 million people, has left its centre a wasteland of ruined buildings and debris.
Russians have shelled the city of Izyum, about 120km southeast of Kharkiv, killing six adults and two children, Ukraine’s parliament said.
An explosion also rocked the Kyiv railway station where thousands of women and children were being evacuated. The blast was caused by wreckage from a downed Russian cruise missile, a Ukrainian interior ministry adviser said, and there were no immediate reports of casualties.
An investigation into possible war crimes will immediately be opened by the International Criminal Court, following requests by 39 of the court’s member states, an unprecedented number.
International response
The United Nations general assembly has condemned Russia’s attack on Ukraine amid continued fierce fighting that Kyiv says has claimed the lives of more than 2,000 civilians and which Moscow admitted for the first time has killed hundreds of its troops.
A second round of tentative talks between Ukraine and Russia are scheduled for Thursday, a week after the Kremlin launched an invasion that the UN says has prompted some 900,000 Ukrainians to flee their homeland, most of them into neighbouring European Union countries.
Late on Wednesday night, the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor on Wednesday said he would immediately open an investigation into possible war crimes committed in Ukraine, following requests to do so by an unprecedented number of the court’s member states.
“Active investigations formally commence in Ukraine upon receipt of referrals by 39 state parties”, prosecutor Karim Khan tweeted.
The referrals by member states fast-track an investigation as it allows the prosecutor to skip having to seek approval of the court in The Hague, shaving months off the process. The prosecutor had already said on Monday that he would seek court approval into allegations of war crimes in Ukraine.
The prosecutor’s office would start collecting evidence for “any past and present allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide committed on any part of the territory of Ukraine by any person”, Mr Khan said in a statement.
Russia is not a member of the ICC and rejects its jurisdiction.
The court can investigate allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on Ukraine territory regardless of the nationality of the suspected perpetrators.
“The message of the general assembly is loud and clear: end hostilities in Ukraine – now. Silence the guns – now. Open the door to dialogue and diplomacy – now,” said UN secretary-general António Guterres.
“The territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine must be respected . . . We don’t have a moment to lose. The brutal effects of the conflict are plain to see. But as bad as the situation is for the people in Ukraine right now, it threatens to get much, much worse. The ticking clock is a time bomb.”
Russia calls its invasion a “special operation” to remove supposed “Nazi” influence in Ukraine and to demilitarise a country that has sought rapid integration with the West since a revolution in 2014. Moscow also demands that Kyiv recognise Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine just weeks after the revolution.
Delegates from Kyiv and Moscow are scheduled to hold a second round of talks on Thursday on the border of Belarus and Poland.
Oil and commodity prices spiralled ever higher on Thursday in a grim omen for global inflation.
For Russians, the fallout has included queues outside banks, a plunge in the value of the rouble which threatens their living standards, and an exodus of Western firms who refuse to do business in the country.
Forbes reported Germany had seized Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov’s mega yacht in a Hamburg shipyard, while at least five superyachts owned by billionaires were anchored or cruising in Maldives, an Indian Ocean island nation that does not have an extradition treaty with the United States, data showed.
Russian businessman Roman Abramovich said he would sell London’s Chelsea Football Club and donate money to help victims of the war in Ukraine. – Additional reporting from Reuters