War in Ukraine: the Ukrainian army speaks of ongoing fighting in Kharkiv

Russian airborne troops landed in Kharkiv on Tuesday night, the Ukrainian military said, reporting ongoing fighting in this eastern Ukrainian city of 1.4 million people.

 

Russian airborne troops landed in Kharkiv and attacked a local hospital, the Ukrainian military said in a statement on Telegram. A fight is underway between the invaders and Ukrainians, it said.

 

According to Anton Guerachtchenko, adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, a fire broke out on Wednesday in the barracks of a flight school in Kharkiv after an air strike. Practically, there is no such area left in Kharkiv where an artillery shell has not yet struck, he said, quoted in a statement on Telegram.

 

This announcement comes on the seventh day of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, which was launched on February 24 and intensified on Tuesday. Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million people near the border with Russia, was targeted by several bombings on Tuesday, which left at least ten people dead and more than 20 injured, according to local authorities.

 

In Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov, more than a hundred people were wounded Tuesday in Russian fire, according to the city's mayor, Vadim Boichenko, quoted by Ukrainian media.

 

In Kherson, whose entrances were already controlled by Russian forces, the latter took control of the railway station and the port during the night, according to the mayor of the city Igor Kolykhayev, quoted by local media.

 

In Borodianka, 50 km from Kiev, Russian airstrikes destroyed two residential buildings on Tuesday, according to Ukraine's first deputy foreign minister, Eminé Djaparova, who shared a video of the gray buildings partially in ruins, with apartments in flames. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry also said overnight that it feared an attack from Belarus.

 

Belarusian troops have been put on alert and are in the concentration areas closest to the border with Ukraine, the ministry said in a statement on Facebook.