Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky insisted he is “not afraid of anyone” as he recorded a new video from his office in the capital for the first time.
“I stay here, in Kyiv, on Bankova, not hiding. And I will stay as long as it takes to win our patriotic war,” Mr Zelensky said in the video filmed late on Monday night and shared on his Facebook page.
At the start of the video he shows the view from his office and before walking to his seat where he continues his address.
“There will be no trace of the enemy. We will make our cities destroyed by the invader better than any city in Russia,” he said.
The president’s official place of residence is the Mariinskyi Palace, in the Pechersk District of Kyiv.
Mr Zelensky said the Ukrainian army is inflicting “extremely painful losses on the enemy” and praised his country’s people for protesting against Russian forces.
“Every Ukrainian man and woman who protested against the invaders yesterday, today and will protest tomorrow are heroes,” he said.
“We shout at the invaders together with you. We stand in the squares and streets with you. We are not afraid with you when the invaders open fire and try to drive everyone away.
“You do not back down. We do not back down.”
In other developments early on Tuesday, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency claimed a Russian general had been killed in fighting around the second city of Kharkiv, which Russian forces have been trying to seize since the invasion began on February 24.
It identified him as Major General Vitaly Gerasimov, 45, and said he had fought with Russian forces in Syria and Chechnya and had taken part in the seizure of Crimea in 2014.
It was not possible to confirm the death independently. Russia has not commented.
As Vladimir Putin’s war entered a 13th day, Ukrainian officials reported further Russian aircraft bombing in cities in eastern and central Ukraine overnight with shelling pounding the suburbs of Kyiv.
In Sumy and Okhtyrka, to the east of Kyiv near the Russian border, bombs fell on residential buildings and destroyed a power plant, regional leader Dmytro Zhivitsky said.
He said there were dead and wounded but gave no figures.
Bombs also hit oil depots in Zhytomyr and the neighbouring town of Chernihiv, west of Kyiv.
In the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, the mayor reported heavy artillery fire.
“We can’t even gather up the bodies because the shelling from heavy weapons doesn’t stop day or night,” Mayor Anatol Fedoruk said. “Dogs are pulling apart the bodies on the city streets. It’s a nightmare.”
The Ukrainian government is demanding the opening of humanitarian corridors to allow people to safely leave Sumy, Zhytomyr, Kharkiv, Mariupol and suburbs of Kyiv, including Bucha.
Russia said it would begin a ceasefire at 7am GMT to let Ukrainian civilians escape the onslaught, though Ukrainian leaders greeted the plan with scepticism since prior efforts to establish evacuation routes crumbled over the weekend amid renewed attacks.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Lviv said the city in far western Ukraine is struggling to feed and house the tens of thousands of people who have fled here from war-torn regions of the country.
“We really need support,” Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said.
More than 200,000 Ukrainians displaced from their homes are now in Lviv, filling up sport halls, schools, hospitals and church buildings. The historical city once popular with tourists had a population of 700,000 before the war.
The mayor said the city needs big tents equipped with kitchens so food can be prepared.
Hundreds of thousands more people could arrive if humanitarian corridors are opened up from cities now under siege from Russian troops.
The embassies of the UK, US and EU countries also moved to Lviv from Kyiv before the invasion.
Lviv is the main transit point for those fleeing just across the border to Poland. Many of the 1.7 million Ukrainians who have fled the country passed through the city.
The United Nations has called the situation the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
