Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday accused Russia of seeking to "erase" Ukrainians, their country and their history.
In a video address, the Ukrainian leader said a missile strike on a target at the site of a Holocaust massacre shows that "for many people in Russia our Kyiv is completely foreign."
"They know nothing about our capital. About our history. But they have an order to erase our history. Erase our country. Erase us all," he said, urging the world's Jews to speak out.
"I am now addressing all the Jews of the world. Don't you see what is happening? That is why it is very important that millions of Jews around the world should not remain silent right now," he said. "Nazism is born in silence. So shout about killings of civilians. Shout about the murders of Ukrainians."
The Russian missile attack, targeting a TV tower near Kyiv, hit the site of the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial. A spokesperson for the memorial said a Jewish cemetery at the site, where Nazi occupiers killed more than 33,000 Jews over two days in 1941, was damaged, but the extent would not be clear until daylight.
Ukrainian authorities said five people were killed in the attack on the TV tower. A TV control room and power substation were hit and at least some Ukrainian channels briefly stopped broadcasting, officials said.
"They know nothing about our capital. About our history. But they have an order to erase our history. Erase our country. Erase us all," Zelenskyy said of President Vladimir Putin's invasion force.
The Ukrainian president complained that under Soviet rule, authorities had built the TV tower and a sports complex on a "special part of Europe, a place of prayer, a place of remembrance".
"Outbuildings. They built a park there. To erase the true history of Babi Yar... This is beyond humanity," he declared.
In Kharkiv, with a population of about 1.5 million, at least six people were killed when the region’s administrative building on Freedom Square was hit with what was believed to be a missile. The Slovenian Foreign Ministry said its consulate in Kharkiv, located in another large building on the square, was destroyed.
The attack on Freedom Square – the nucleus of public life in the city – was seen by many Ukrainians as brazen evidence that the Russian invasion wasn’t just about hitting military targets but also about breaking their spirit.
The bombardment blew out windows and walls of buildings that ring the square, which was piled high with debris and dust. Inside one building, chunks of plaster were scattered, and doors lay across hallways.
“People are under the ruins. We have pulled out bodies,” said Yevhen Vasylenko, an emergency official.
As the seventh day of the war dawned Wednesday, Russia found itself increasingly isolated, beset by the sanctions that have thrown its economy into turmoil and left the country practically friendless, apart from a few nations like China, Belarus and North Korea.
While the fighting raged, so did the humanitarian toll. Roughly 660,000 people have fled Ukraine and countless others have taken shelter underground.
The death toll was less clear, with neither Russia nor Ukraine releasing the number of troops lost. The United Nations human rights office said it has recorded 136 civilian deaths, though the actual toll is surely far higher.
Ukrainian defense ministry estimated that more than 5,000 Russian soldiers had been captured or killed in the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II.
