Russian airborne troops landed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Wednesday, the Ukrainian army said, adding that there were immediate clashes.
“Russian airborne troops landed in Kharkiv… and attacked a local hospital,” the army said in a statement on messaging app Telegram. “There is an ongoing fight between the invaders and the Ukrainians.”
Kharkiv, a largely Russian-speaking city near the Russian border, has a population of around 1.4 million.
“Practically there are no areas left in Kharkiv where an artillery shell has not yet hit,” he was quoted as saying in a statement on Telegram.
In Kherson on the Black Sea, where officials had on Tuesday reported Russian checkpoints encircling the city, Russian forces took control of the railway station and the port overnight, city mayor Igor Kolykhayev was quoted by local media.
Russia’s Defense Ministry says Russian troops have captured the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson.
“The Russian divisions of the armed forces have taken the regional center of Kherson under full control,” ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in televised remarks.
The coastal city, which is home to nearly a quarter million people, has been the scene of heavy fighting in recent days. It lies just north of Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
In Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov, more than a hundred people were injured on Tuesday in Russian fire, the mayor of the city, Vadym Boychenko was quoted as saying by Ukrainian media.
In Borodyanka, 50 kilometres from Kyiv, Russian airstrikes destroyed two residential buildings on Tuesday, according to Ukraine’s deputy minister of foreign affairs Emine Dzhaparova, who shared a video of the grey buildings partially in ruins, with apartments in flames.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence also said overnight that it feared an attack from Belarus.
“Belarusian troops have been put on high alert and are concentrated in areas closest to the border with Ukraine,” the ministry said in a statement on Facebook.
During the day on Tuesday, Ukrainian intelligence noted “significant activity” of aircraft in the border area, and convoys of vehicles carrying food and ammunition were observed there, the statement said.
Meanwhile, Germany has “increased and extended” its role in NATO’s enhanced Air Policing in Romania in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Defense Ministry said.
In a post on Twitter, the ministry said six German Eurofighter jets would protect the military alliance’s southeastern flank until at least the end of March.
Three German Eurofighters already in Romania were joined by three additional German aircraft last week, a NATO statement said.
Enhanced Air Policing is a collective defense mission to protect and secure NATO’s airspace.