Explosion rocks Kiev train station as Russian advance stalls

An explosion rocked a train station in Kiev late Wednesday where thousands of women and children were being evacuated, Ukraine’s state railway company said, as the UN General Assembly demanded that Vladimir Putin end his invasion.

An Interior Ministry adviser said the blast was caused by debris from a downed Russian cruise missile and not a direct rocket attack. There were no immediate reports of casualties and the station building had sustained minor damage. The trains kept running.

Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, also came under heavy shelling on the seventh day of the war, but the Ukrainians denied Russia’s claim that its forces had taken the Black Sea port of Kherson.

A US official also said control of Kherson remained disputed and said Russian forces appeared to be becoming more aggressive in attacking infrastructure inside Kiev as their progress slows in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance.

The invasion has fallen short of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal of toppling Ukraine’s government, but it has sent more than 870,000 people fleeing across borders to neighboring countries and rattled the global economy as governments and businesses fall into line. to isolate Russia.

The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to condemn the invasion.in the strongest terms” and demanded that Russia withdraw its forces in a resolution backed by 141 of the 193 members.

Although the General Assembly resolutions are not binding, they carry political weight, and Wednesday’s vote represents a symbolic victory for Ukraine and increases Russia’s international isolation.

French President Emmanuel Macron praised the courage of the Ukrainians in the face of a war that, according to him, is the sole responsibility of Putin. “The days ahead will probably get harder”, he said in a televised national address.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that as of midnight on March 1, it had confirmed that 227 civilians had been killed and 525 injured during the conflict, the majority “caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide range of impact area. He warned that the actual figure would be much higher due to reporting delays.

After failing to quickly take major cities and subdue the Ukrainian army, US officials have been saying for days that they believe Russia will change its strategy to encircle the cities, cut off supply and escape routes, and then attack with a force combined armor and ground troops.

“They want to destroy us”

The heaviest bombardment has been on Kharkov, an eastern city of 1.5 million people, leaving its center a wasteland of dilapidated buildings and rubble.

“The Russian ‘liberators’ have come”, lamented a Ukrainian volunteer sarcastically, as he struggled with three others to remove the body of a man wrapped in a sheet from the ruins of a main square.

According to authorities, at least 25 people have been killed by shelling and airstrikes in the city in the last 24 hours.

Pavel Dorogoy, a 36-year-old photographer who lives near the city center, said Russian forces had attacked the city hall building, which was empty at the time, a telephone exchange and a television tower.

“Most of the people have been hiding in basements for most of today and last night. The Russians can’t get into the city, so they only attack us from afar, they just want to destroy what they can“, said.

The Russian government denies targeting civilians and says it intends to disarm Ukraine, a country of 44 million people, in a “special military operation”.

Hopes for a diplomatic way out of the crisis continued to wane.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said a Ukrainian delegation had left for a second round of talks with Russian officials on a ceasefire, after making little headway in the first round on Monday.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Russia must stop bombing if it wants to negotiate.

According to Washington’s assessment, the US official reported, there has been no significant change on the ground in Ukraine since Tuesday, despite the launch of more than 450 Russian missiles at Ukrainian targets.

Putin’s regime claimed Wednesday that it had captured Kherson, a southern provincial capital of about 250,000 people strategically located where the Dnieper River empties into the Black Sea.

Zelensky adviser Oleksiy Arestovych denied that Kherson is fully under Russian control: “The city has not fallen, our side continues to defend itself”, he assured.