The first major city in Ukraine has 'fallen' to the Russian army as Vladmir Putin's troops attacked a major building in Kherson.
Igor Kolykhayev, the city's mayor, said Russian soldiers stormed the council building on Wednesday, March 2.
The mayor begged troops not to shoot civilians and asked them to only walk through the streets during the day, either alone or with one other soldier.
He said: "We do not have the armed forced in the city, only civilians and people who want to live here." the Mirror reports.
The invasion comes after a Russian official claimed troops had also seized the city of Kherson, which the Ukrainian military deny.
The city is under Russian soldiers' "complete control", Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said earlier on Wednesday.
He said the city's civilian infrastructure, essential facilities and transport are operating as usual and that there are no shortages of food or essential goods.
Maj Gen Konashenkov said talks between the Russian commanders, city administrations and regional authorities on how to maintain order in the city were under way on.
A senior US defence official said that they have seen statements that the Russians have taken Kherson, but that the Ukrainian military is rejecting that claim.
"Our view is that Kherson is very much a contested city at this point," said the official.
At the same time Ukraine's second biggest city, Kharkiv, has suffered heavy bombardment as Russia's week-long invasion was denounced by the United Nations in a historic vote and dozens of countries referred Moscow to be probed for potential war crimes.
The biggest attack on a European state since 1945 has caused over 870,000 people to flee, a barrage of sanctions against Russia, and stoked fears of wider conflict in the West unthought-of for decades.
The incursion has yet to overthrow the government in Kyiv but thousands are thought to have died or been injured and it could cause another deep hit to the global economy still emerging from the coronavirus pandemic.
Bombing of Kharkiv, a city of 1.5 million people in eastern Ukraine, has left its centre a wasteland of ruined buildings and debris.
"The Russian 'liberators' have come," one Ukrainian volunteer said sarcastically, as he and three others strained to carry the dead body of a man wrapped in a bedsheet out of the ruins on a main square.
A UN resolution reprimanding Moscow was supported by 141 of the assembly's 193 members, passed in a rare emergency session, a symbolic victory for Ukraine that increases Moscow's international isolation.
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