Huge armoured column nears Kyiv as ‘barbaric’ missile strikes continue

A huge armoured column is rolling towards Kyiv, raising fears Russia may pulverise civilian areas in its attempt to seize Ukraine's capital after missiles killed at least 18 civilians in the country's second city and five more died in a strike on Kyiv's TV tower.

The Russian defence ministry on Tuesday urged Kyiv residents and those "involved by nationalists in provocations against Russia" to leave the city before what it called "high-precision strikes" that it claimed would be aimed at security service targets, even as officials in Moscow said more ceasefire talks would be held on Wednesday.

Ukraine's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, accused the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, of "murdering innocent civilians" as he tweeted video of a huge explosion in Kharkiv's Freedom Square, calling it a "barbaric missile strike" resulting from Putin's inability to "break Ukraine down".

Officials said the Freedom Square strike on a regional government building left 10 civilians dead and Ukrainian emergency services said a later missile strike on a residential building in Kharkiv had killed eight more.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said repeated Russian missile strikes on Kharkiv amounted to state terrorism and a war crime. "Nobody will forgive. Nobody will forget," he said, describing the strikes as "frank, undisguised terror".

Israel's Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Centre voiced its "vehement condemnation" of the Russian attack. "We call on the international community to take concerted measures to safeguard civilian lives as well as these historical sites because of their irreplaceable value for research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust," it said.

In a highly emotional address to the European parliament on Tuesday that was greeted with a standing ovation, the Ukrainian president said at least 16 children had been killed around Ukraine on Monday and mocked Russia's claim that it was going after only military targets.

"Where are these children, what kind of military factories do they work at? What tanks are they going at, launching cruise missiles?" He reiterated his country's wish to join the EU, saying Ukraine "has a desire to see our children alive - I think it is a fair one. We are fighting for survival. We are fighting to be equal members of Europe. We are exactly the same as you are."

More than 70 Ukrainian soldiers were also killed in the eastern city of Okhtyrka, between Kharkiv and Kyiv, in a Russian missile strike on a military base, local officials said, giving conflicting accounts of when the attack took place.

On the sixth day of fighting since Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine, the failure of its armed forces, amid continuing stiff resistance, to capture a single major city has led western countries to warn that commanders may increasingly bomb civilian areas.

International sanctions and global financial isolation, which have had a sudden and devastating impact on Russia's economy, with the rouble in freefall and long queues outside banks, may further increase the Kremlin's frustration, observers have said.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that Russian strikes were "hitting schools, hospitals, and residential buildings", with "reports of Russia's human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law mounting by the hour".

The British defence ministry said in an intelligence update on Tuesday that the Russian advance on Kyiv had "made little progress over the past 24 hours, probably as a result of continuing logistical difficulties", warning that an apparent shift in Russian tactics would inevitably put Ukrainian civilians at much greater peril.

At least 136 civilians have been killed, including 13 children, and 400 have been injured since the start of the invasion last week, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said on Tuesday, adding that the real toll would almost certainly be much higher.

One Okhtyrka resident, Igor, said the city had been attacked every day since 24 February, with hits not just on military but also civilian targets, sometimes with thermobaric rockets. "It's awful - I feel angry and desperate," he told the Guardian.

The key south-eastern city of Mariupol, which separatists have said they aim to encircle with 24 hours, was without electricity after multiple missile attacks from advancing Russian forces, while reports said the southern city of Kherson was surrounded.

The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, said in Warsaw with his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki, that it was clear Putin was "prepared to use barbaric and indiscriminate tactics", later describing the attack on Kharkiv as "absolutely sickening" and reminiscent of massacres of civilians in Sarajevo in the 1990s.

The major eastern city had already come under heavy fire on Monday, with at least nine people - including three children - killed and 37 injured by missile strikes hitting civilian areas. "It's not just a war, this is a massacre of Ukrainian people," the mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said

Human rights groups and Ukraine's ambassador to the US have accused Russia of using cluster bombs and vacuum bombs, weapons that are normally banned in civilian areas. The US said it had no confirmation of their use.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said allegations of Russian strikes on civilian targets and the use of cluster and vacuum bombs were fakes, adding it was "out of the question" that sanctions would "force us to change our position" on the invasion, which Russia calls a "special operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine.

Nato's secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, called on Russia to end the war, calling it "totally unacceptable", but added that "as a defensive alliance" the organisation would not send troops or combat jets to avoid becoming part of the conflict.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have abandoned their homes to escape the Russian advance and more than 660,000 have fled the country, according to the UN refugee agency, with thousands awaiting passage at European border crossings.

Ukraine's general staff said on Tuesday Russian losses since the attack included 5,710 personnel, 29 destroyed and damaged aircraft, and 198 tanks. The figures could not be verified.

The escalation in shelling and missile strikes in Ukraine's urban areas came as a Russian military column gathering to the north of Kyiv was estimated to be 40 miles (64km) long, more than double its size three days ago.

Satellite photos also showed deployments of ground forces and ground attack helicopter units in southern Belarus, although the country's pro-Russia president, Alexander Lukashenko, said on Tuesday he had no plans to join the invasion.

As an unprecedented array of international sanctions began to bite, including crippling measures against Russia's central bank preventing it from using its $630bn of foreign reserves to prop up the rouble, the oil company Shell became the latest western firm to announce it was pulling out of Russia.

BP and Norway's Equinor have also said they are quitting the country, which relies on oil and gas for export earnings, while multiple major banks, airlines and carmakers have ended partnerships, halted shipments and denounced the Russian invasion.

The shipping group Maersk followed other international transport groups on Tuesday in saying it was suspending all container shipments to and from Russia except those containing food, medical and humanitarian supplies.

In the cultural arena, three major film studios, Sony, Disney and Warner Bros, said they were pausing cinema releases in Russia, and YouTube is in the process of blocking Russia's state-backed news channels RT and Sputnik in Europe.

Russia has also been barred from most major sporting competitions, while World Taekwondo has stripped Putin himself, who is passionate about martial arts and his athletic prowess, of his honorary black belt because of the invasion.