Thousands of civilians have scurried out of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, and the violence looks set to dramatically snowball with a 40-mile convoy of Russian tanks and vehicles meandering towards the city from the north.
Reinforcing the fears, Russia warned it is about to strike 'intelligence infrastructure' in Kyiv and told civilians living near military buildings to evacuate.
The strikes will target these buildings with precision munitions, Moscow's defence ministry claimed, though after the indiscriminate pounding of the three cities of Kharkiv, Mariupol and Kherson, there were few takers for the Russian claim.
The U.N. refugee agency warned that Europe would soon face its “largest refugee crisis this century.” About 660,000 refugees have fled Ukraine in the last six days, an increase of more than 150,000 in the last 24 hours.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine on Tuesday accused Russia of war crimes for targeting civilians. The United Nations has revealed that at least 136 civilians, including 13 children, were killed in the first five days of the invasion.
A video showed a rocket hit directly in front of an administrative building in Kharkiv. At least seven people were killed, officials said, reinforcing fears that Russia was increasingly targeting civilian areas. Most see this as brazen evidence that the Russian invasion wasn't just about hitting military targets but also about crushing their spirits.
Incidentally, Belarus has thrown its lot with Russia and decided to send its own soldiers into the fight against Ukraine, according to the country's parliament, with an attack on the north eastern city of Chernihiv. President Zelenskyy condemned the bombing attacks as 'terrorism' and vowed that 'nobody will forgive, nobody will forget' Russia's actions.
Day 6 found Russia increasingly isolated by tough economic sanctions that have thrown its economy into a tizzy. But a belligerent Russian former
Dmitry Medvedev, a former prime minister of Russia, responded with an ominous warning to a comment by France’s economy minister that Europe was going to wage “total economic and financial war” against Russia.
Medvedev warned that in history, economic wars “quite often turned into real ones,” constraining the French to backtrack on their remark.
About 100 diplomats, many from Western countries, walked out of a speech by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, in Geneva on Tuesday.
In a worrying development, Human Rights Watch said it had documented a cluster bomb attack outside a hospital in Ukraine's east in recent days. Local residents have also reported the use of the munitions. If confirmed, that would represent a worrying new level of brutality in the war and could lead to even further isolation of Russia.
The Kremlin denied on Tuesday that it has used such weapons and insisted again that its forces only have struck military targets - despite evidence documented by Associated Press reporters of shelling of homes, schools and hospitals.
Throughout the country, many Ukrainian civilians spent another night huddled in shelters, basements or corridors.
With oil prices spiking to well above $100 a barrel, the U.S. energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, on Tuesday will lead a meeting of energy officials from around the globe on the impact of Russia’s invasion on energy supplies. (Input western media sources)
