First Ukrainian city falls: Mayor of Kherson tells people to follow the orders of Russian soldiers

The first major city in Ukraine has fallen to the Russians, the mayor confirmed on Wednesday, urging his residents on Facebook to obey ‘armed people who came to the city’s administration’.

Kherson, home to 290,000 people, is 300 miles south of Kyiv.

The city is strategically important, sitting on an inlet of the Black Sea 260 miles west of the separatist enclave of Donetsk.

Ihor Kolykhaiev, mayor of Kherson, earlier on Wednesday insisted the city remained under Ukrainian control, but it has now fallen. 

Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, issued a video address to the nation in the early hours of Thursday, giving an upbeat assessment of the war and calling on Ukrainians to keep up the resistance.

‘We are a people who in a week have destroyed the plans of the enemy,’ he said, in the clip posted on social media. 

‘They will have no peace here. They will have no food. They will have here not one quiet moment.’

Zelensky did not comment on whether the Russians have seized several cities, including Kherson.

‘If they went somewhere, then only temporarily. We’ll drive them out,’ he said.

He said the fighting is taking a toll on the morale of Russian soldiers, who ‘go into grocery stores and try to find something to eat.’

Video clips shared on social media showed the Russian forces looting towns as they passed.

Some claimed that the Russians who were captured were found with rations on them which had expired in 2015.

Western officials have reportedly said they believe some of the young Russian troops do not want to fight and are sabotaging their vehicles, puncturing the gas tanks. 

‘These are not warriors of a superpower,’ said Zelensky. ‘These are confused children who have been used.’

He said the Russian death toll has reached about 9,000.

‘Ukraine doesn’t want to be covered in bodies of soldiers,’ he said. ‘Go home.’  

In the early hours of Thursday a huge explosion rocked Kyiv – preceded by the blaring of air raid sirens at around 2am local time in multiple districts across the city.

Kyiv’s buildings were then lit up by a huge blast from a bomb.  

The Kyiv Independent reported that air raid alerts were issued in multiple regions included Kyiv Oblast, Lviv, Zhytomyr, Frankivsk, Chernihiv and Odessa.

Footage from the capital, filmed from windows overlooking the city, showed at least one massive explosion that lit up the night sky, and appeared to cause a shock-wave. 

In another video, captured by CBS News reporters moments after signing off following a report, two bursts of light could be seen over Kyiv. 

While the explosions were not filmed directly, the intensity of them was enough to shock the reporter and his film crew, who were some distance away from the blasts.

Hours earlier, a Russian missile struck near Kyiv’s southern main rail station where thousands of women and children are being evacuated, Ukraine’s state-run railway company Ukrzaliznytsya said in a statement. 

The station building suffered minor damage and the number of any casualties was not yet known, it said, adding trains were still operating despite the blast.

Ukraine’s interior ministry adviser Anton Herashchenko said the blast was caused by wreckage from a downed Russian cruise missile, not a direct rocket strike. 

Trains continued to run. Herashchenko added the strike may have cut off central heating supply to parts of the Ukrainian capital amid freezing winter temperatures.

Unverified reports said two missiles were launched towards the headquarters of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, with one being shot down. The HQ and the railway station sit across a road from one another in Kyiv. 

Kherson was, throughout Wednesday, the focus of fierce fighting.

Earlier on Wednesday, a U.S. official told AP: ‘Our view is that Kherson is very much a contested city.’  

Kolykhaiev later in the evening said Russian soldiers were in the city and came to the city administration building. 

He said he asked them not to shoot civilians and to allow crews to gather up the bodies from the streets.

‘I simply asked them not to shoot at people,’ he said in a statement. 

‘We don’t have any Ukrainian forces in the city, only civilians and people here who want to LIVE.’ 

Kolykhaiev said he never imagined he would end up dealing with a war.

‘Everything that is happening now in our city is politics that I hate,’ he wrote. 

‘I came to office to renew infrastructure, invest in Kherson, build houses, roads, parks and a new life for my hometown. 

‘Now, I’m looking for special packages for those killed.’ 

The capture of Kherson came as Western officials told CNN that they believe the Russian strategy is moving toward a ‘slow annihilation’ of the Ukrainian military.

They warned that the grinding pace of the conflict could see Russia resorting to the bombardment of cities and civilian targets.

Ukrainian forces have so far been able to stave off Russia’s initial push, maintaining control of Kyiv and other major cities. 

Russia has lost roughly 3-5 percent of its tanks, aircraft, artillery and other military assets inside Ukraine, according to two US officials familiar with the latest intelligence. 

Ukraine has lost roughly 10 percent of its capabilities, and they remain massively outgunned and outmanned. 

And Russia is now bringing in heavier, more destructive weaponry and increasingly striking civilian infrastructure, after an initial focus on military targets, the officials said.

‘The cruel military math of this will eventually come to bear, absent some intervention, absent some fundamental change in the dynamic,’ one official said. 

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, told Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a call on Wednesday that Ukraine needs additional deliveries of weapons ‘now,’ Kuleba tweeted.

A senior intelligence official said: ‘They need bullets. They need bandages. They’re going to need fuel. They’re going to need ammunition, in addition to the humanitarian support to help with medical assistance, sustaining hospitals, both for combat wounded and for civilians that are being hurt.

‘And they’re going to need a lot again in ammunition and the weapons resupply, because the Russian force is both numerically and qualitatively superior.’ 

Moscow’s isolation deepened, meanwhile, when most of the world lined up against it at the United Nations to demand it withdraw from Ukraine. 

And the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into possible war crimes.

A second round of talks aimed at ending the fighting was expected on Thursday, but there appeared to be little common ground between the two sides.

Russia reported its military casualties for the first time since the invasion began last week, saying nearly 500 of its troops have been killed and almost 1,600 wounded. 

Ukraine did not disclose its own military losses but said more than 2,000 civilians have died, a claim that could not be independently verified.

With fighting going on on multiple fronts across the country, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Mariupol, a large city on the Azov Sea, was encircled by Russian forces. 

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said the attacks there had been relentless.

‘We cannot even take the wounded from the streets, from houses and apartments today, since the shelling does not stop,’ he was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

Meanwhile, the senior U.S. defense official said the immense column of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles appeared to be stalled roughly 16 miles from Kyiv and had made no real progress in the last couple of days.

The convoy, which earlier in the week had seemed poised to launch an assault on the capital, has been plagued with fuel and food shortages and has faced fierce Ukrainian resistance, the official said.

On the far edges of Kyiv, volunteer fighters well into their 60s manned a checkpoint to try to block the Russian advance.

‘In my old age I had to take up arms,’ said Andrey Goncharuk, 68. 

He said the fighters needed more weapons, but ‘we’ll kill the enemy and take their weapons.’

Russian warplanes bombed the village of Gorenka, a half-hour’s drive from Ukraine’s capital, Wednesday, leaving the bodies of villagers strewn among ruined homes, residents said.

In the northern city of Chernihiv, two cruise missiles hit a hospital, according to the Ukrainian UNIAN news agency 

Russia also pounded Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city with about 1.5 million people, in another round of aerial attacks that shattered buildings and lit up the skyline with flames. 

At least 21 people were killed and 112 injured over the past day, said Oleg Sinehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional administration.

Several Russian planes were shot down over Kharkiv, according to Oleksiy Arestovich, a top adviser to Zelensky.

‘Kharkiv today is the Stalingrad of the 21st century,’ Arestovich said, invoking what is considered one of the most heroic episodes in Russian history, the five-month defense of the city from the Nazis during World War II.

From his basement bunker, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov told the BBC: ‘The city is united and we shall stand fast.’

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 said residential buildings were also hit.

Seven days into Russia’s invasion, the United Nations said more than 934,000 people have fled Ukraine in a mounting refugee crisis on the European continent, while the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency warned that the fighting poses a danger to Ukraine’s 15 nuclear reactors.

Rafael Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency noted that the war is ‘the first time a military conflict is happening amid the facilities of a large, established nuclear power program,’ and he said he is ‘gravely concerned.’

‘When there is a conflict ongoing, there is of course a risk of attack or the possibility of an accidental hit,’ he said. 

Russia already has seized control of the decommissioned Chernobyl power plant, the scene in 1986 of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

In New York, the U.N. General Assembly voted to demand that Russia stop its offensive and immediately withdraw all troops, with world powers and tiny island states alike condemning Moscow. The vote was 141 to 5, with 35 abstentions.

Assembly resolutions are not legally binding but can reflect and influence world opinion.

The vote came after the 193-member assembly convened its first emergency session since 1997. 

The only countries to vote with Russia were Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Eritrea. Cuba spoke in Moscow’s defense but ultimately abstained.

Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said Russian forces ‘have come to the Ukrainian soil, not only to kill some of us … they have come to deprive Ukraine of the very right to exist.’ 

He added: ‘The crimes are so barbaric that it is difficult to comprehend.’

A large explosion shook central Kyiv on Wednesday night in what the president’s office said was a missile strike near the capital city’s southern railway station. 

There was no immediate word on any deaths or injuries. 

Thousands of Ukrainians have been fleeing the city through the sprawling railway complex.

A spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, released his side’s military casualty figures, disputing as ‘disinformation’ reports of much higher losses. 

Ukraine’s leader claimed almost 6,000 Russian soldiers have been killed.

Konashenkov also said more than 2,870 Ukrainian troops have been killed and about 3,700 wounded, while over 570 have been captured.

Russia also ramped up its rhetoric. 

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reminded the world about the country’s vast nuclear arsenal when he said in an interview with Al-Jazeera that ‘a third world war could only be nuclear.’

Commanders of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces warned they would no longer take Russian artillerymen as prisoner of war in response to their ‘brutal shelling’ of cities – a move which would be a war crime. 

‘Each and every gun crew… will be slaughtered like pigs,’ a statement on their Facebook page on Wednesday evening said. 

On Wednesday morning, the bodies of the five victims of a rocket strike on Kyiv’s television tower were piled into a van and removed from the site by police – as the capital’s mayor Vitali Klitschko warned that Russian forces were ‘getting closer’. 

Klitschko vowed that ‘we will fight’ to defend the city, amid fears it could soon be battered by artillery fire from a 40-mile long convoy parked nearby. 

Along with his brother and fellow former boxer Wladimir, the mayor called for more support from the west in an interview on Wednesday.

Ukrainian police said Wednesday they had arrested a man who brought explosives hidden in a child’s toy to one of the Kyiv subway stations where thousands of people have been sheltering. 

The police also said four other suspected saboteurs were arrested, including two who were carrying weapons.  

After failing to swiftly take major cities and to subdue Ukraine’s military, U.S. officials have said for days that they believe Russia will instead seek to encircle cities, cutting off supply and escape routes, then attacking with a combined force of armour, ground troops and engineers.

A top Ukrainian diplomat received a standing ovation from diplomats after a heartfelt speech Wednesday to the U.N.’s top human rights body, calling on the Human Rights Council to help hold Russia’s government accountable by creating a panel of experts to scrutinize the invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking by video from Kyiv, Emine Dzhaparova, Ukraine’s first deputy minister of foreign affairs, described being awoken by the sound of an explosion on February 24 as the invasion began. 

She said her government was ‘fully operational’ and lashed out at ‘false claims’ by Putin that Ukraine was committing ‘genocide.’

‘Do you know how Russia treats and deals with genocide in Ukraine? By airstrikes using cruise and operational tactical missiles, tanks and artillery, reconnaissance groups and sabotage groups,’ she said. 

‘Ukrainian babies are born in the bomb shelters in bunkers. 

‘As we speak here today, Russian armed forces keep attacking maternity wards, kindergartens, orphanages, hospitals.’

Dzhaparova noted an ‘urgent debate’ at the council about the situation in Ukraine, calling for countries in the 47-member-state body’s to set up a Commission of Inquiry – the council’s most powerful tool to scrutinize human rights violations and abuses. 

US President Joe Biden used his first State of the Union address to highlight the resolve of a reinvigorated Western alliance that has worked to rearm the Ukrainian military and adopt tough sanctions, which he said have left Putin ‘isolated in the world more than he has ever been.’

‘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.’