Major Ukrainian cities including the capital, Kyiv, have reported stepped-up bombardment as Russia’s unprovoked invasion entered its second week and UN members condemned Moscow’s actions as “deplorable” and demanded that Russia withdraw.
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Concerns for civilians caught in the fighting intensified on March 3 as Russian and Ukrainian officials prepared to meet for cease-fire talks that could include discussion of humanitarian corridors.
An aide to Ukraine’s president said such access could help with food, medicine, ambulances, and the evacuation of children.
The UN human rights office said on March 3 that it has recorded 136 civilian deaths in Ukraine in the week since the invasion was launched, including 13 children.
Ukraine’s national emergency service has said more than 2,000 civilians have died, but that figure was impossible to confirm.
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.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a video address to the public early on March 3, urged Ukrainians to maintain their resistance.
“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.”
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 said that despite heavy Russian shelling, 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.
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.
At least four 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 told Current Time on March 2 that there were “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 chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague announced on March 2 that his team had begun gathering evidence “as rapidly as possible” over allegations of war crimes and other atrocities, following appeals from 39 countries for an investigation of events in Ukraine.
“In particular, I am satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine in relation to the events already assessed during the preliminary examination by the office,” prosecutor Karim Khan said.
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.
Ukrainian authorities have barred men aged 18-60 from leaving the country, as military and reserve troops and civil-defense groups battle tens of thousands of Russian troops and paratroopers, aerial bombardment, and columns of tanks and armored vehicles.
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 continued.
The United States announced new sanctions against Russia and the introduction of strict controls on the export of high-tech products to Belarus.
India and Australia announced that U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of India, Australia, and Japan would hold an previously unannounced online meeting of the so-called Quad group of countries.
Japan’s NHK national broadcaster said they would likely discuss and coordinate 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.
