Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky
As Russian forces intensified their attacks Wednesday on the civilian areas of Ukraine’s largest cities, particularly Kyiv and Kharkiv, Ukrainian civilians continued to flee neighboring nations for refuge.
“During this time, we have truly become one,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a televised address to Ukraine. “We forgave each other. We started loving each other. We help each other. We are worried for each other.”
Kharkiv, a city of 1.5 million people, has been the target of the most intensive bombing.
Reuters quoted authorities as saying 21 people have been killed by shelling and airstrikes within 24 hours and that an additional four were killed on Wednesday morning.
Since President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine last week, there has been an exodus of major companies from the Russian market including Apple, Exxon and Boeing. This has left Moscow isolated both financially and diplomatically.
“He thought he could roll into Ukraine, and the world would roll over. Instead, he met a wall of strength he could never have anticipated or imagined: He met Ukrainian people,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in his first State of the Union address Tuesday.
On the same day, U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara, issued a statement:
“We will continue to respond to the threats facing our nation, from the naked aggression of authoritarian governments like Russia to the undeniable impacts of the climate crisis.”
Russia said it had sent delegates for a second round of peace talks in Belarus near the Ukraine border. However, President Zelensky said the bombing needed to stop if Russia wanted to negotiate peace.
“We will continue to respond to the threats facing our nation, from the naked aggression of authoritarian governments like Russia to the undeniable impacts of the climate crisis,” said U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal.
On Wednesday, Moscow announced that it had captured Kherson, which is a provincial capital of around a quarter of a million people on Ukraine’s southern front. However, Ukraine protests the claim that Kherson has been captured.
The regional governor said on Tuesday night that it was surrounded and under fire. Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Zelenskyy, said street fighting was occurring in the port at Dnepr, at the river’s exit into the Black Sea.
“The city has not fallen, our side continues to defend,” Mr. Arestovych told Reuters.
Military experts are saying that they expect the war to become only more destructive as Russia resorts to heavy artillery.
“And in doing that, they’re going to do something that … they didn’t want to do, because they wanted to take the city intact,” retired U.S. Army Col. Jack Jacobs told CNBC.
The World Health Organization is supplying medical aid for skin and bone grafts as well as amputations for Ukrainian refugees.
A total of six tons of medical supplies for trauma care and surgery for 1,000 patients have been shipped, as well as other supplies for 150,000 more will arrive in Poland on Thursday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a press briefing in Geneva.
CNBC quoted Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO’s head of emergencies programs, as saying, “I think this gives you the graphic nature of what’s happening. These are ordinary civilians being broken and the health system is going to have to put them back together again.”
email: kzehnder@newspress.com
