Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
Ukrainian forces battled Russian troops on the streets of Ukraine's second largest on Sunday after Russia's forces entered Kharkiv earlier in the day, a local governor said.
"The Russian enemy's light vehicles have broken into Kharkiv, including the city center," Governor Oleh Sinegubov said. "Ukraine's armed forces are destroying the enemy. We ask civilians not to go out."
live
Russian forces enter Kharkiv on Sunday
Videos published by Anton Herashchenko, adviser to the interior minister and Ukraine's state information agency, showed several light military vehicles moving along a street and, separately, a burning tank. A witness in Kharkiv said Russian soldiers and armored vehicles could be seen in different parts of the city and firing could be heard.
Military trucks with the letter "Z" painted on their sides, associated with the Russian military, could be seen in residential areas, the witness said.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensiy urged the world on Sunday to scrap Russia's voting power at the U.N. Security Council and said Russian actions verged on "genocide."
"This is terror. They are going to bomb our Ukrainian cities even more, they are going to kill our children even more subtly. This is the evil that has come to our land and must be destroyed," Zelensky said on a short video message.
"Russia's criminal actions against Ukraine bear signs of genocide," he added.
Meanwhile Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko called on Kyiv on Sunday to sit down and hold talks with Russia so that Ukraine does not lose its statehood, Russia's RIA news agency reported.
Russia said on Sunday its delegation was ready to meet Ukrainian counterparts in the Belarusian city of Gomel, but Kyiv said Belarus was complicit in the Russian invasion and could not be regarded as a neutral intermediary.
Although Zelensky rejected the Russian offer of talks in Belarus, left the door open to negotiations in other locations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn't disclosed his ultimate plans, but Western officials believe he is determined to overthrow Ukraine's government and replace it with a regime of his own, redrawing the map of Europe and reviving Moscow's Cold War-era influence.
The pressure on strategic ports in the south of Ukraine appeared aimed at seizing control of Ukraine's coastline stretching from the border with Romania in the west to the border with Russia in the east. A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said Russian forces had blocked the cities of Kherson on the Black Sea and the port of Berdyansk on the Azov Sea,
Cutting Ukraine's access to its sea ports that would deal a major blow to the country's economy. It also could allow Moscow to build a land corridor to Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014 and until now was connected to Russia by a 19-kilometer (12-mile) bridge, the longest bridge in Europe which opened in 2018.
Russia's military also put increasing pressure on strategic ports in the south of Ukraine, blocking the cities of Kherson on the Black Sea and the port of Berdyansk on the Azov Sea. He said the Russian forces also took control of an airbase near Kherson and the Azov Sea city of Henichesk Ukrainian authorities also have reported fighting near Odesa, Mykolaiv and other areas.