Ukraine-Russia War: Today is the eighth day of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. The war between Russia and Ukraine started on 24 February. After this, Russia is constantly targeting major cities of Ukraine. Russian forces on Wednesday intensified their attacks on the capital Kyiv and Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv, with plumes of smoke rising over densely populated areas. Explosions are also being heard in Kyiv. On Tuesday, the Russian army targeted the TV tower in Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the bombing of a main square in Kharkiv and Kyiv’s main TV tower a terror and said no one would forget it. No one will forgive this. Russian forces fired two cruise missiles at a hospital in the northern city of Chernihiv. The main building of the hospital has been damaged.
Attacks in Kharkiv continued on Wednesday, killing many and injuring several others. The roof of a five-storey police office blew up in an explosion. Russia also attacked a TV tower in the capital Kyiv. About 8,74,000 people have left Ukraine. Many have taken shelter in basement bunkers.
Russia wants to capture these cities
Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, is known for its golden domes of ancient churches and monasteries. Having been the capital of independent Ukraine since 1991, the city of 2.9 million people has long been known by its Russian name, Kyiv. It celebrated its 1,500th anniversary in 2001 and both its 16th-century Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Monastery as well as the Cathedral of St. Sophia are on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Kyiv’s sprawling Central Independence Square (known as the Maidan) became the center of the “Orange Revolution” as well as the pro-European insurgency of 2014, which took over Russia’s Crimea.
Kharkiv
Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second largest city, located only 40 kilometers (25 mi) from the Russian border. This city of 1.4 million residents is primarily a Russian-speaking tech hub. It has been heavily bombed by Russian forces in recent days. It was also badly damaged in World War II. Since 2014 it has been home to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing fighting between government forces and Russian-backed rebels in the nearby eastern Donbass region.
Mariupol
Mariupol, a major port city on the Azov Sea, has been under attack since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Mariupol was captured by Russian-backed separatists from Donetsk at the beginning of the uprising against Kyiv in 2014, before being retaken by Ukrainian forces. The southeastern city of 441,000 people lies between separatist-held territory and the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014. The Russian military on Tuesday claimed links with separatists.
Berdyansk
The Russian military claimed it had taken the port of Berdysk on the Azov Sea on Monday after advancing beyond Crimea. The resort of 115,000 residents is famous for its beaches and mud baths, which welcome more than half a million tourists annually. It is only 84 kilometers along the coast from Mariupol.
Kherson
Kherson is a strategic port located on the west bank of the Dnieper River that controls the approach to the Crimean peninsula. A base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the east, its fall would open the way to Odessa in the west, which has a majority Russian-speaking population, and borders with NATO-member Romania and Moldova. It is a shipbuilding city with a population of 287,000.
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