MUKACHEVO, Ukraine — Russian forces laid siege to key urban areas across Ukraine on Wednesday, advancing on the strategic port city of Kherson and bombarding Kharkiv, the nation’s second-largest city, while facing fierce resistance and resupply challenges in other areas.
Images of bombs ripping through civilian infrastructure on the seventh day of fighting prompted a new round of intense criticism of Moscow, with the U.N. General Assembly voting 141 to 5 to condemn Russia’s actions, with 35 abstentions.
“This is shameful,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Washington, describing the carnage including a hospital scene where children receiving cancer treatment were moved to the facility’s basement while explosions sounded overhead.
At the General Assembly session in New York, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, dismissed critics as peddlers of “lies” and repeated earlier statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin that the goal of the invasion was to “demilitarize and de-genocide” Ukraine.
Ukrainian and U.S. officials described Russian forces as being bogged down in many parts of the country, facing fuel and food shortages, except for substantial advances in the south. “They have lost a sense of momentum,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.
A massive Russian convoy of tanks and combat vehicles was still struggling to make its way to Kyiv, the capital, stalled by attacks by the Ukrainian military, low morale among Russian troops and botched planning, Western defense officials said. But U.S. officials cautioned that Moscow probably would bounce back from early setbacks and continued to maintain the upper hand against Ukraine’s outgunned and less-experienced military.
Russian forces were locked in a fierce battle to take Chernihiv, a strategic northern city on a highway that links Ukraine’s border to Kyiv.
Russian-held areas
and troop movement
RUSSIA
BELARUS
Separatist-
controlled
area
1
Kyiv
2
Kharkiv
UKRAINE
Mariupol
Kherson
Odessa
3
Crimea
Annexed by Russia
in 2014
Black Sea
100 MILES
Russian forces expanded offensive operations west of Kyiv, further enveloping the city.
1
Heavy bombardment of Kharkiv continues.
2
Mariupol has been fully encircled and civilian infastructure has been destroyed to force the city to surrender.
3
Control areas as of March 2
Sources: Institute for the Study of War; Post reporting
Russian-held areas
and troop movement
BELARUS
RUSSIA
Kyiv
1
2
Kharkiv
UKRAINE
Mariupol
Separatist-
controlled
area
Kherson
Odessa
3
Crimea
Annexed by Russia
in 2014
Black
Sea
100 MILES
Russian forces expanded offensive operations west of Kyiv, further enveloping the city.
1
Heavy bombardment of Kharkiv continues.
2
Mariupol has been fully encircled and civilian infastructure has been destroyed to force the city to surrender.
3
Control areas as of March 2
Sources: Institute for the Study of War; Post reporting
BELARUS
RUSSIA
Russian-held areas
and troop movement
POLAND
Heavy bombardment of Kharkiv continues.
Russian forces expanded offensive operations west of Kyiv, further enveloping the city.
Kyiv
Kharkiv
UKRAINE
Mariupol has been fully encircled and civilian infastructure has been destroyed to force the city to surrender.
Mariupol
Separatist-
controlled
area
ROMANIA
Kherson
Odessa
Sea of
Azov
Crimea
Annexed by Russia
in 2014
Black
Sea
100 MILES
Control areas as of March 2
Sources: Institute for the Study of War; Post reporting
The United Nations has recorded the deaths of more than 130 civilians, including 13 children, since the start of fighting last week, most of them due to shelling and rocket fire. The actual toll is probably far higher, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said. Already, more than a million Ukrainian refugees have fled the country, the U.N. refugee agency said, with more than half a million of them going to Poland.
The grim humanitarian picture contributed to the lopsided vote at the U.N. General Assembly, where resolutions are nonbinding but seen as a reflection of the overall will of the international community. Russia’s negative vote was backed only by Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria. Even some countries who sided with Russia during a similar vote in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea, abstained on Wednesday, including Armenia, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
Speaking in Superior, Wis., President Biden said the vote shows that the majority of the world is opposed to Putin’s invasion.
“More than 80 years ago, another dictator tried to finally resolve the issue of another people,” Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Nations Sergiy Kyslytsya said, referring to German leader Adolf Hitler. “He failed when the world responded in a resolute and united manner.”
Also Wednesday, the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine after referrals from 39 countries — including several European nations, as well as Canada, Colombia, Australia and New Zealand. Neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to the statute that created the ICC, which is based in The Hague. But the organization’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, said the court has jurisdiction to investigate because Ukraine has accepted ICC jurisdiction in the past.
The Russian government said 498 service members have died in the Ukraine war and 1,597 have been wounded, conceding for the first time the high death toll of just a week’s fighting. There was no way to verify the toll, and Russian officials often understate casualty figures. Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said 572 service members have been captured.
The Pentagon has said it does not have a reliable estimate of the number of Russian and Ukrainian troops who have been killed.
Russia continued to shift toward what human rights groups have warned are deadly siege tactics that Moscow has used in other war zones, including Syria. The United States believes that Russian forces will increasingly rely on artillery fire as they draw nearer to population centers and begin siege tactics in earnest.
The flow of weaponry to Ukraine increased this week when Germany opened its stockpiles and Australia said it would provide Kyiv with about $70 million in “lethal military assistance,” including missiles and unspecified weapons.
On Wednesday, Ukraine announced that it had received a shipment of Turkish drones. Ukrainian forces have used drones from Turkey in recent days to damage advancing Russian armored columns. Turkey, which is trying to maintain stable relations with both Russia and Ukraine, did not comment on the shipment.
Kirby said the Ukrainians received military aid within the past day, but he did not describe what was included and how it was delivered.
He also said the United States is delaying a test of the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile that was planned for this week, a decision intended “to demonstrate that we are a responsible nuclear power.” The move came days after Putin ordered his nuclear forces on alert, with U.S. officials seeking a measured response to avoid escalation.
Ukrainian officials across the country reported an intensifying Russian barrage on Wednesday, including against civilian areas. In Mariupol, in southern Ukraine, the city council accused Russia of shelling houses, hospitals and a hostel for migrants. The city — a strategic location that could allow Russia to create a land bridge from southern Russia, through Ukraine, to Crimea, which Moscow controls — was still under Ukrainian control Wednesday, the city council said.
The northeastern city of Kharkiv, home to 1.5 million people, continued to come under heavy bombardment as rockets and missiles hit buildings and supplies of food ran short. Blinken criticized the Russian siege and appealed to common links between the Russian and Ukrainian people, noting that Khakiv is “one of the largest Russian-speaking cities in Europe.”
A member of an international monitoring mission to Ukraine was killed in Tuesday’s shelling in Kharkiv, according to the group overseeing the mission, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Maryna Fenina was slain “while getting supplies for her family in a city that has become a war zone,” the organization said in a statement.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told Sky News that the Ukrainians appear to have succeeded in delaying and disrupting the initial invasion with strategic attacks on vehicles and equipment.
“We’ve seen footage, we can’t verify, but we’ve seen footage of Ukrainians using UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] to attack petrol train convoys, to go after logistical lines — we’ve seen lines blown up — all the things you and I think of when it comes to resistance,” he said. “When any army on the move takes longer to do things, your logistical supply chain is stretched. If you’re given enough rations for two days and it takes you six, you’ve suddenly got a problem. And I think what we’ve seen is a lot of those issues are coming to bear.”
Others said it was too soon to say how long the Russian ground offensive would be delayed.
The Pentagon remains puzzled by a Russian lack of cohesion. Moscow massed multiple military elements for the invasion — including infantry, air power, tanks and artillery — yet it has not effectively used them to complement one another in a strategy known as combined arms, Kirby said. But that could change as Russia incrementally adds forces; more than 80 percent of the combat power it deployed to the border had entered Ukraine as of Tuesday, the Pentagon has said.
Russian forces “are receiving needed supplies and reinforcements that may facilitate much more rapid and effective operations in the coming 24-72 hours,” said an assessment by the Institute for the Study of War.
The Russian effort around Kyiv, the institute added, “remains poorly organized, however, with elements of many different battalions combined into what seem to be ad hoc groupings rather than operating under standing regiment or brigade headquarters.”
“Russian logistical and operational failures around Kyiv will be difficult to remedy quickly and will likely continue to cause friction and reduce the effectiveness of Russian operations even as supply issues are addressed and reinforcements come into the fight,” the assessment said. “It remains too early to evaluate the likely effective combat power the added Russian troops will bring.”
Hudson and Horton reported from Washington and Fahim from Istanbul. Karla Adam in London and Robyn Dixon in Moscow contributed to this report.