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Russia said Wednesday that its forces took control of Kherson, the first largest city in the south, as fighting raged across Ukraine and Western countries were tightening the economic noose around Russia.
More than half a million Ukrainians have fled the country since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale attack on its southern neighbor last Thursday.
Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities continued, while videos posted on social media show heavily damaged buildings around the second city, Kharkiv.
“While he (Vladimir Putin) can make progress on the battlefield, he will pay a consistently high price in the long run,” said US President Joe Biden in his State of the Nation address. Avoiding the prepared text, President Biden added that “he has no idea what is coming.” But the president did not elaborate.
The attacks are facing fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces and a Russian military convoy miles long north of Kiev has made little progress towards the capital.
In a speech Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said about 6,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the first six days of Moscow’s aggression and that the Kremlin would not be able to occupy its country with bombs and airstrikes.
A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said Russian forces had taken control of Kherson, a city of nearly a quarter of a million people in northern Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. Strategically located on the Dnieper River, the provincial capital is the largest city that fell into the hands of Russian forces so far.
An adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Russia did not control Kherson and that street fighting was taking place in the southern port, which is located at the mouth of the Dnieper River in the Black Sea.
“The city has not fallen, our side continues to defend itself,” said councilor Oleksiy Arestovych.
The southeastern city of Mariupol has been under intense bombardment since late Tuesday and was unable to evacuate the wounded, according to its mayor.
A senior US defense official said on Tuesday that the advance of Russian forces in Kiev had stalled due to logistical problems, including a lack of food and fuel, and that some units appeared to have low morale./VOA
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