More than 1 million people have fled Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, in the swiftest refugee exodus this century, the United Nations said Thursday, as Moscow said it was ready for more talks to end fighting even as its forces pressed their assaults on the country’s second-largest city and two strategic seaports.
The tally the UN refugee agency released to The Associated Press was reached Wednesday and amounts to more than 2% of Ukraine’s population being forced out of the country in seven days. The mass evacuation could be seen in Kharkiv, a city of about 1.5 million people where residents desperate to escape falling shells and bombs crowded the city’s train station and pressed onto trains, not always knowing where they were headed.
With a column of tanks and other vehicles apparently stalled for days outside the capital of Kyiv, fighting continued on multiple fronts across Ukraine. A second round of talks aimed at ending the fighting was expected later Thursday in neighboring Belarus — though the two sides appeared to have little common ground.
“We are ready to conduct talks, but we will continue the operation because we won’t allow Ukraine to preserve a military infrastructure that threatens Russia,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, adding that it would let Ukrainians to choose what government they should have.
Lavrov said that the West has continuously armed Ukraine, trained its troops and built up bases there to turn Ukraine into a bulwark against Russia — repeating Russian claims that it has used to justify its operation in Ukraine.
The US and its allies have insisted that NATO is a defensive alliance that doesn’t pose a threat to Russia. And the West fears Russia's invasion is meant to overthrow Ukraine's government and install a friendly government.
Russian forces continued their pressure. Britain’s Defense Ministry said Mariupol, a large city on the Azov Sea, was encircled by Russian forces. The status of another vital port, Kherson, a Black Sea shipbuilding city of 280,000, remained unclear.
Russia’s forces claimed to have taken complete control of Kherson, which would be the biggest city to fall in the invasion thus far. Britain’s Defense Ministry said that was possible, though not yet verified. The mayor said there were no Ukrainian forces in the city — but he said the Ukrainian flag was still flying over it.
Overnight, Associated Press reporters in Kyiv heard at least one explosion before videos started circulating of apparent strikes on the capital.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had knocked out a reserve broadcasting center in the Lysa Hora district, about 7 kilometers (4 miles) south of the government headquarters. It said unspecified precision weapons were used, and that there were no casualties or damage to residential buildings.
A statement from the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces didn’t address the strikes, saying only that Russian forces were “regrouping” and “trying to reach the northern outskirts” of the city.
“The advance on Kyiv has been rather not very organized and now they’re more or less stuck,” military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer told the AP in Moscow.
At least 227 civilians have been killed and another 525 wounded since the invasion began, according to the latest figures from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Earlier, Ukraine said more than 2,000 civilians have died, a figure that could not be independently verified.
