Extraordinary new images from Ukraine show before and after Russian forces indiscriminately bombarded and obliterated apartment blocks and entire residential areas.
Pictures show residential buildings ablaze and damaged in Chernihiv after authorities said Russia used banned cluster munitions to indiscriminately shell civilian areas of the northern city on Thursday, killing 47 people.
Other images show rubble and burnt out cars covering the ground of the Freedom Square in Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv after a rocket attack by Russian forces.
It comes as Russian troops launched an attack today on another Ukrainian city – Mykolaiv, in the south – and renewed their bombardment on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol. The nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia also came under attack overnight, sparking a fire that raged for four hours before it was put out.
Russia has been increasingly waging a war of terror against Ukrainian civilians after attempts to rapidly capture the country failed. Indiscriminate shelling of major Ukrainian cities has been taking place, leaving hundreds of innocents dead. Mariupol, in the south, has been without power, water, or heating for three days as local officials say Russian troops are also stopping food getting in.
The U.N. human rights office says at least 227 civilians have been killed and 525 wounded in Ukraine since the start of the invasion. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service has said more than 2,000 civilians have died, though it’s impossible to verify the claim.
Pictures show before and after residential buildings were set ablaze and damaged in Chernihiv
Images show before and after images of a residential building in Chernihiv after Russia bombed the city on Thursday
Other images show rubble and burnt out cars covering the ground of the Freedom Square in Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv after a rocket attack by Russian forces
An apartment building in Kyiv before and after it was bombed by Russian forces on February 26
Satellite images show the village of Rivnopollya, near Chernihiv, with giant craters in the ground smoke billowing from burning homes after Russia bombed the area.
The town of Irpin, a quiet residential community just west of Kyiv, was also hit, with many buildings flattened and set ablaze. At least 15,000 Kyiv residents are effectively living underground in the network of metro stations and tunnels.
The capital Kyiv, in the path of a Russian armoured column that has been stalled on a road for days, came under renewed attack on Friday, with air raid sirens blaring in the morning and explosions audible from the city centre.
And the attack on Ukraine showed no sign of letting up today, as Mykolaiv, in the south of Ukraine, came under attack in the early hours with Russian forces moved within striking distance of the city centre.
The city is located just a few miles from Kherson, which fell to Putin’s men earlier in the week, and is a key point on the road to Odessa – Ukraine’s third-largest city and main port – that is now under threat.
Putin’s men also continued their bombardment of Mariupol, hundreds of miles along the Black Sea coast to the east, which remains in Ukrainian hands but is surrounded and being shelled into submission. If Russia can take it, then large parts of Ukraine’s army dug into trenches in the Donbass are in danger of getting cut off.
Satellite images show the village of Rivnopollya, near Chernihiv, before and after it was bombed by Russian forces
City Hall in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv before and after it was bombed in a Russian rocket attack that destroyed the road outside and blew the windows out of the building itself on Tuesday morning, killing at least ten people
Freedom Square in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, before and after it was destroyed in indiscriminate shelling by Russian forces on Tuesday, March 1
A residential building in the small town of Irpin, north west of Kyiv before and after it was hit in a Russian missile attack after Moscow’s forces invaded Ukraine
A police building in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, before and after it was hit by a Russian rocket, blowing out the windows and sparking a massive fire
Pictures show the centre of the city of Kharkiv after a rocket attack in front of a civilian public administration building that destroyed the road outside and blew the windows out of the building itself on Tuesday morning.
Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky, speaking in a video posted on Facebook, said the attack on Kharkiv’s Freedom Square was ‘open, undisguised terror’ and branded Russia a ‘terrorist state’ for indiscriminately shelling Kharkiv – even as Moscow maintained its forces are only targeting military infrastructure.
A day earlier Zelensky accused Russia’s President Vladimir Putin of war crimes after Moscow’s forces launched what were believed to be cluster and vacuum bomb attacks in an attempt to turn the tide of a conflict that they have so-far been losing.
Footage from inside the the civilian public administration building in Kharkiv on Tuesday showed it was heavily damaged, with ceilings collapsing and rubble strewn around.
The road outside a police building in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, on Tuesday after it was hit in shelling, leaving debris strewn across the streets outside
A woman picks her way through the rubble of a destroyed school in the city of Zhytomyr, 80 miles to the west of Kyiv, as Russia renews its assault on the country for a ninth day
Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, has come under renewed bombardment having already suffered heavy damage in increasingly indiscriminate Russian attacks (pictured)
Russia is continuing to advance in southern Ukraine, with Mariupol under bombardment and Odessa and Mykolaiv under threat. Chernihiv, in the north, and Kharkiv, in the east, continue to come under heavy bombardment. The capital Kyiv is also under threat, though Ukrainian counter-attacks took out some Russian forces early on Friday
Since Russian troops rolled into Ukraine last week to achieve Putin’s mission of overthrowing Zelensky’s pro-Western government, hundreds of civilians have been killed.
Footage has revealed the moment bombs rained down on a tower block that was obliterated in Chernihiv, one of the hardest-hit cities of Ukraine. Authorities in Chernihiv said civilian areas of the city were hit with banned cluster munitions on Thursday, killing 47 people.
Kyiv says Russia has now lost around 9,200 men in the fighting, along with hundreds of tanks, almost a thousand armoured vehicles, and dozens of helicopters and jets.
It came after Russia launched an attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant overnight, killing three guards and sparking a fire that raged in the facility for four hours before emergency crews were eventually allowed to extinguish it once Putin’s men had taken control.
The attack sparked international condemnation, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson branding it ‘reckless’ and saying it had ‘threatened the security of the whole of Europe’.
The fighting raged on as NATO diplomats met in Brussels today, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying that NATO is prepared for war and will defend ‘every inch’ of member states’ territory.
Ukrainian authorities said on Friday Russian forces seized the largest nuclear power plant in Europe after a building at the Zaporizhzhia complex was set ablaze during intense fighting.
‘This just demonstrates the recklessness of this war and the importance of ending it and the importance of Russia withdrawing all its troops,’ Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.
On Thursday, Zelenskiy said that if allies wouldn’t meet his request to protect Ukrainian air space, they should instead provide Kyiv with more war planes.
‘We have 15 nuclear units so these units, two in the east are close to the front line of war. It’s not just a Ukrainian question,’ Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko told Reuters on Thursday. ‘We are fighting. We will fight to the end.’
Russia’s land assault on the capital Kyiv has moved slowly but Russian forces have shelled residential blocks and key civilian infrastructure, including in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv in the northeast.
Yevghen Zbormyrsky, 49, reacts in front of his burning house after being shelled in the city of Irpin, outside Kyiv
A woman weeps in the streets of Irpin, a satellite city of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, after it was destroyed by a Russian shell
People remove personal belongings from a burning house after being shelled in the city of Irpin, outside Kyiv
The Azov Sea port of Mariupol has been encircled and left without electricity or running water by heavy Russian bombing.
Spooked by the invasion, eastern members of the 30-nation NATO are ramping up defence spending and seeking more protection.
‘Russian troops are in Ukraine and in Belarus, so we need to rethink everything,’ said Romania’s Foreign Minister Bogdan, adding his country would increase its defence spending to 2.5% of GDP next year.
Poland announced plans to go up to 3%. Last week Germany also responded to the war with a commitment to increase military spending. In a departure from its long-declared policy, Berlin also authorised arms supplies to Ukraine.
Meanwhile Russian lawmakers approved legislation Friday to impose fines and harsh jail terms for publishing ‘fake news’ about the army – the latest move to silence dissent one week after Moscow launched the invasion of Ukraine.
The bill sets out jail terms of varying lengths and fines against people who publish ‘knowingly false information’ about the military.
‘If the fakes led to serious consequences, (the legislation) threatens imprisonment of up to 15 years,’ Russia’s lower house of parliament said.
Amendments were also passed to fine or jail anybody calling for sanctions against Russia.
An office block in the centre of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, is left in ruins after being hit by a Russian strike
Damaged cars sit abandoned in the streets amid rubble after an office block in central Kharkiv was hit by a Russian strike
Kharkiv has been under days of bombardment, with local officials saying there is no area of the city that has not been hit
