On day seven of the Russian invasion, Ukrainians came under heavy bombardment in residential areas, and at least two key cities, Mariupol and Kharkiv, were in the process of being encircled.<\/p>\n
Russian troops claimed they had captured another strategic city in the south, Kherson, though local officials said it was still in Ukrainian hands.<\/p>\n
Mariupol’s deputy mayor Serhiy Orlov described a situation close to humanitarian catastrophe after more than 15 hours of continuous shelling.<\/p>\n
He said hundreds of people in one residential district were feared dead, including Mr Orlov’s own father, who lived in the area and hadn’t been heard from since the attack.<\/p>\n
In Kherson, a city of 250,000 just north of Crimea, 58-year-old paramedic Larysa Pavlovska said some residential areas had been “bombed out”, while video verified by the BBC appeared to show Russian troops in the city centre.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian forces said Russian paratroopers had landed in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, and there was street fighting on the outskirts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On day seven of the Russian invasion, Ukrainians came under heavy bombardment in residential areas, and at least<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[318,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n