Many in the eastern town of Derhachi, just north of Kharkiv and near the border with Russia, have decided to leave while they can. Buildings have been badly damaged by Russian artillery. Kharkiv itself has been hammered by air and rocket strikes from the start.
Mykola, a father of two in Derhachi who declined to give his surname, said he could hear the thud of bombardments every night, and had been hunkering down with his family in the corridor of their home.
“(We’ll go) wherever there are no explosions, where the children won’t have to hear them,” he said, hugging his young son and struggling to hold back the tears.
Ukraine’s military said Russian forces were continuing preparations for an eastern offensive in order to take full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. It said the main focus of current hostilities was Donetsk, where Russian troops were still trying to seize all of Mariupol.
Ten high-rise buildings were on fire in the eastern town of Sievierodonetsk after Russian shelling on Wednesday, the region’s governor said in an online post.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he had spoken with Putin and asked him to announce an immediate ceasefire.
NEW SANCTIONS
The United States announced a new round of sanctions targeting Russian banks and Kremlin officials and banning Americans from investing in Russia.
The sanctions hit Russia’s Sberbank, which holds one-third of Russia’s total banking assets, and Alfabank, the country’s fourth-largest financial institution, US officials said. But energy transactions were exempted, the officials said.
The United States is also placing sanctions on Putin’s two adult daughters, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s wife and daughter, and members of Russia’s security council.
“I made clear that Russia would pay a severe and immediate price for its atrocities in Bucha,” Biden said on Twitter.
Britain also froze Sberbank’s assets, and said it would ban imports of Russian coal by the end of the year.
The head of the European Commission signalled further moves – including examining energy imports – on top of sanctions unveiled by the bloc on Tuesday.
But a crack in a unified EU front emerged, with Orban saying Hungary was prepared to accede to Russia’s demand to pay in roubles for Russian gas.
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