KHARKIV, Ukraine (AFP) — Four people have been killed and another nine wounded during shelling in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, where Russian forces landed on Wednesday, the emergencies services said.
“Four dead, nine injured,” the services said, citing preliminary information.
Kharkiv, a largely Russian-speaking city near the Russian border, has a population of around 1.4 million.
It has been a target for Russian forces since President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine last Thursday and which intensified on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s army said there were immediate clashes after Russian troops landed earlier in the day.
“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.”
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser for Ukraine’s interior minister, was quoted in a statement on Telegram as saying that “practically, there are no areas left in Kharkiv where an artillery shell has not yet hit”.
The airborne operation came as US President Joe Biden branded Putin a “dictator”, warning the sanction campaign to cripple Russia’s economy would escalate and its oligarchs were being targeted.
In Biden’s first State of the Union address, he hailed the resolve of the Western alliance and voiced solidarity with Ukraine as lawmakers in the US Congress gave a standing ovation to the Ukrainian people.
© Agence France-Presse