KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces Wednesday intensified a wide-ranging offensive targeting key Ukrainian cities, menacing the capital of Kyiv with a miles-long military convoy, launching deadly strikes on the second-largest city of Kharkiv and apparently breaching a strategic Black Sea port city with tanks and troops.
On the seventh day of a war marked by fierce Ukrainian resistance against Russian firepower, Moscow faced growing international denunciations. The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution condemning the invasion, and President Joe Biden said it was “clear” that Russia was deliberately targeting civilians.
Significantly, Russia — which is traditionally secretive about combat casualties — for the first time provided an accounting of its battlefield deaths, with the Ministry of Defense acknowledging that 498 soldiers had been killed and 1,597 wounded since the start of its assault. Ukraine has claimed more than 10 times as many Russian soldiers have died; the differing accounts could not be reconciled.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said a delegation was ready to hold evening talks with Ukrainian representatives at an undisclosed location. Ukrainian officials also confirmed their readiness to hold discussions, which would be the second such session since the conflict erupted.
In Kyiv, a city of 3 million people, defenders — a motley mix of regular army troops and ad hoc civilian militias — braced for an expected full-scale attack, erecting makeshift barricades, stockpiling ammunition and establishing lookouts.
Daylight on Wednesday in the snow-blanketed capital revealed the destructive power of a Russian missile strike the previous evening that killed five people, wounded five others and damaged a building on the grounds of the country’s main Holocaust memorial, Babyn Yar. Russia had warned residents to leave the area in advance of what it called a “precision strike” on a communications center.
In the aftermath, the city’s iconic television tower, erected in 1973, remained standing, but the blast disemboweled a nearby commercial building, blowing out the windows of a gym and roasting treadmills arrayed in a line.
An automotive supply store nearby was a chaotic maw of glass shards and car parts. The shock wave burst open a billboard and left power lines dangling onto the street.
Some of the most harrowing scenes of the invasion have emerged in Kharkiv, where blasts in recent days have devastated the city’s central square and other populated areas. More deadly strikes occurred Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said.
The city lies only a few dozen miles from the border with Russia, and its largely Russian-speaking population has sometimes been considered to have closer ties to Moscow than Kyiv. But the city’s mayor, Igor Terekhov, said in a video uploaded Wednesday that attitudes toward Russia had changed completely after “unforgivable” attacks.
“All over the city of Kharkiv, there’s intense fighting from all sides, and obviously this situation is very dangerous,” the mayor told the BBC, adding defiantly: “We are not frightened. You cannot frighten the city of Kharkiv.”
Repercussions continued to widen Wednesday from the Ukraine conflict, Europe’s largest land war in decades. The invasion has sent more than 874,000 people fleeing Ukraine for neighboring countries, the biggest such migration wave within Europe since the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Sanctions from a reinvigorated Western alliance have begun to pummel the Russian economy, sending the ruble plunging and crippling parts of the financial sector. Putin’s government has denounced the punitive steps as illegitimate.
In recent days, Russian officials from Putin on down have employed heightened rhetoric of a type not heard since the cold war. On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted by the RIA news agency as saying that if a third world war were to erupt, it would involve nuclear weapons.
Russia’s diplomatic isolation was growing. The General Assembly resolution demanding that Moscow immediately stop using force against Ukraine and withdraw its military from the country was approved by a vote of 141-5, with 35 abstentions.
“If the U.N. has any purpose, it is to prevent war, to condemn war, to end war,” the U.S. permanent representative, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the assembly.
While there were no overt signs that Putin’s iron grip on power inside Russia was loosening, jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny urged compatriots to rise up in protest against Putin and the war. In a Twitter statement posted by a spokeswoman, Navalny called Putin an “insane tsar.”
In Ukraine’s southern coastal regions, defenders and attackers battled for control of Kherson, a Black Sea outpost that could be used as a springboard for an attack on Odessa, the crown jewel of Ukraine’s port cities. Russia’s defense ministry said Wednesday it now controls the city, but Ukrainian officials contested that claim.
Residents in Kherson, a city of some 300,000 people, posted videos purporting to show Russian soldiers and tanks entering the city. Drone footage taken over a bridge near Kherson appeared to depict a battle between Ukrainian soldiers and armored vehicles against Russian artillery.
For Kyiv’s hunkered-down residents, Tuesday night’s missile strike near the TV tower provided the most potent demonstration yet of the military threat facing the capital. But on Wednesday, people were out on the streets in greater numbers than in past days, with cars navigating newly erected checkpoints and pedestrians out replenishing water and food supplies.
The massive Russian convoy, which stretches for 40 miles but remains stalled about 20 miles north of the city, has become emblematic of logistical stumbles by the invading force, including what Western officials say are supply shortages that have bogged down some troop movements.
But Western military analysts and officials believe that Putin and his generals, if frustrated by the initial sluggishness of the advance, might resort to overwhelming force directed at civilian areas, a hallmark of past Russian offensives elsewhere.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace predicted growing “brutality” on Putin’s part in coming days.
“He surrounds cities, he ruthlessly bombards them at night,” Wallace said in a radio interview. “And he will then eventually try and break them.”
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that though Russian forces were moving closer to the capital, the city was prepared and that critical infrastructure, including public transportation, was still functioning.
“Do not believe misinformation intended to break Ukrainians. Kyiv stands and will stand. We will fight,” he said in a video message Wednesday.
Despite the looming threat, even those sheltering in the depths of a metro station near the scene of Tuesday night’s missile strike said they had become accustomed to a new rhythm of life in the capital.
“We felt scared in the beginning, yes, but now, after a week?” said Julia Andreyivna, 25, a manager at a magazine publisher who sat on an inflatable mattress, cradling her cat, Mark. “We feel OK. It’s become routine.”
She had no intention of leaving the capital.
“We’re staying,” she said. “This is our Kyiv.”
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(Bulos reported from Kyiv and King from Washington.)
