Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged his countrymen to keep up their resistance against Russian forces despite bombardment and encirclement efforts against major cities.
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The appeal came after Russia’s all-out invasion entered its second week and UN members condemned Moscow’s actions as “deplorable” and demanded a withdrawal.
In his latest video address after a night of Russian shelling of Kyiv and strategic cities Kharkiv, Chernihiv, and Mariupol, Zelenskiy on March 3 praised Ukrainian resistance and said, “We have nothing to lose but our own freedom.”
“They will have no peace here,” Zelenskiy said of Russian invaders. He described Russian troops as “confused children who have been used” and called on them to “go home.”
He said Ukraine was receiving daily supplies of arms from allies abroad.
The Ukrainian General Staff and an adviser to Zelenskiy were later quoted as saying that Ukraine was increasingly able to launch counterattacks as it tries to fend off the Russian troops.
“Help to us is increasing every minute and the strength of the enemy is decreasing every minute,” Reuters quoted the unnamed presidential adviser as saying. “We’re not only defending but also counterattacking.”
WATCH: RFE/RL’s Maryan Kushnir witnessed the immediate aftermath of an attack on the town of Borodyanka, northwest of the capital in the Kyiv region.
Ukraine’s border authority announced that nearly 14,000 Ukrainians, mostly men, had returned to the country on March 2, an increase of around 2,000 from the previous day.
Ukrainian negotiators have arrived at the border with Belarus for a second round of peace talks with Russia.
Earlier, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak posted a photo of himself and Ukrainian delegation leader Davyd Arakhamia in a helicopter on their way to the talks, where they are expected to push for humanitarian corridors to allow safe passage for women, children, and the elderly as Russian troops advance one week into their attacks on Ukraine.
The first round of talks on February 28 ended after more than five hours without a breakthrough.
Ukraine’s national emergency service has said more than 2,000 civilians have died, but that figure was impossible to confirm.
Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova, addressing the UN Human Rights Council on March 3, said that Russian bombings of Ukrainian cities “clearly amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Dzhaparova called for “accountability for war criminals spilling the blood of Ukrainian children.”
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said on March 3 that an advance team had left The Hague for Ukraine to begin gathering evidence of possible war crimes.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said a day earlier that he had “a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine” and that 39 countries appealed for an investigation of events there.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell sent a message on March 3 demanding that “This war needs to stop now.”
“I call for an immediate cease-fire,” Borrell wrote on Twitter after visiting a refugee center in the capital of Moldova, which shares a long border with Ukraine. “I call for immediate establishment of humanitarian corridors.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned on France-2 television that “I think it is possible that the worst is ahead of us” in Ukraine. He said France would propose a resolution to the UN Security Council later on March 3 to demand a cease-fire in Ukraine.
But Russia’s veto power made progress on such a proposal unlikely.
Russian troops were meanwhile reported to have reached the center of their first sizable Ukrainian city since the all-out conflict began but it was unclear who controlled the Black Sea coastal city of Kherson.
Kherson’s mayor, Ihor Kolykhayev, said late on March 2 that Russian troops were in the streets of that city of nearly 300,000 people and had entered the local council building.
He said he had spoken to the “armed visitors” and made no promises but, “I just asked them not to shoot people.”
Regional official Hennady Lakhuta was quoted as saying “occupiers” were in “all parts” of Kherson.
A U.K. intelligence update on Ukraine early on March 3 said that while some Russian forces had entered Kherson, the military situation was unclear.
British intelligence concluded that Kharkiv and the cities of Chernihiv and Mariupol remained in Ukrainian hands.
But it said Mariupol, a large port city on the Azov Sea, appeared to be encircled by Russian forces, echoing a Russian Defense Ministry claim.
Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, said on March 3 that Russian forces were attacking rail links to prevent evacuations and “systematically and methodically” blockade the city.
Mariupol needs a cease-fire in order to restore power in the besieged city, the mayor said.
A powerful rocket attack was reported in Sumy, with multiple casualties, according to the head of the regional state administration of the region, Dmytro Zhivitskiy.
Major blasts were reported overnight in Kyiv.
But the U.K. intelligence report echoed other sources in saying a huge military column extending tens of kilometers north of the capital had made little apparent progress over the past three days.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on March 3 that some of the explosions that rang out over that city overnight were the work of Ukrainian air-defense systems targeting Russian missiles.
He also vowed that heating mains near the main railway station damaged the previous day would be repaired and restored on March 3.
“The city authorities continue to ensure the operation of Kyiv’s critical infrastructure,” Klitschko said.
He urged Kyiv residents to avoid unnecessary travel in and around the capital, and reminded them of the nighttime curfew.
Klitschko has warned of “obvious plans” by Russian troops to surround the capital and that they planned to strangle Kyiv with a blockade.
Ukrainian officials lowered expectations as they headed to the planned cease-fire talks with Russian representatives on March 3 in the southern Belarusian region of Brest.
Zelenskiy has said Russian forces must stop bombarding Ukrainian cities before meaningful cease-fire talks can begin on halting the biggest military operation to invade a European state since World War II.
The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, said the sides would also discuss a possible humanitarian corridor in Ukraine.
Similar Russia-Ukraine talks on February 28 ended with no progress.
WATCH: Russian soldiers have been seen looting grocery stores and banks in several Ukrainian cities. Security camera footage posted on social media showed Russian soldiers grabbing food and trying to steal a safe.
The UN’s refugee agency said on March 3 that 1 million people had fled Ukraine in the past seven days to find safety in neighboring countries.
Train stations and border checkpoints with Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary were jammed with mostly women and children.
The United Nations plenum approved a nonbinding resolution late on March 2 that “deplores” Russia’s “aggression against Ukraine.” It was supported by 141 of the assembly’s 193 members.
Thirty-five members, including China and Russian allies Iran and Cuba, abstained, and five countries, including Russia, Syria, and Belarus, voted against the resolution.
The U.S. State Department also called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to “immediately cease this bloodshed” and withdraw Russian troops, and condemned blocks and threatened blocks on independent news outlets and the authorities’ “throttling” of social media.
Protests in Russia against the invasion of Ukraine have incurred mass arrests, and Russian authorities have imposed broad bans on the use of words like “war” or “invasion” to describe events in Ukraine.
International measures to punish Russia’s invasion of its neighbor have also continued, including financial bans, sports bans, and businesses ceasing operations in Russia.
The United States announced new sanctions against Russia and the introduction of strict controls on the export of high-tech products to Belarus.
The Washington Post reported that U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration had requested $10 billion from Congress to aid Ukraine as U.S. spending talks continue.
Ukrainian Central Bank Governor Kyrylo Shevchenko said that international financial support so far for Ukraine totaled more than $15 billion.
Biden was expected to hold an online meeting early on March 3 with the leaders of India, Australia, and Japan, the so-called Quad group of countries at which they were expected to discuss responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In the European Union, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban reportedly said his country would not veto another round of EU sanctions against Russia. He said that “unity is paramount” at this point, according to local outlet Mandiner.hu.
Ukrainian former world heavyweight boxing champion Volodymyr Klitschko, brother of the Kyiv mayor, praised the international sports community for its response “standing together” to pressure Moscow with bans on Russian organizations and participation in major events.
“Ban Russian teams from participating. I have nothing against the athletes but they are presenting the regime and in some way the connection with this war,” Klitschko said.
Later, the International Paralympic Committee announced that athletes from Russia and Belarus, which allowed Russian military staging near the border, will not be able to compete at the Winter Paralympics in Beijing set to begin on March 4.
Russia’s Defense Ministry on March 2 gave its first casualty estimates since launching the unprovoked invasion. It said 498 of its soldiers have died since the war started last week, while a spokesman added on Twitter that another 1,597 Russian soldiers had been wounded.
The numbers could not be independently verified and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine, which has said Russia’s casualty numbers are close to 6,000.
The Ukrainian military’s General Staff said on March 3 that Russia’s casualty numbers are around 9,000, another figure that is impossible to verify.
