Heavy fighting is ongoing in Kharkiv as Russian paratroopers landed in the Ukrainian city and proceeded to attack the Kharkiv Military Medical Center, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Russian forces appeared early on Wednesday morning to have taken the central part of the Ukrainian southern city of Kherson, CNN reported citing authenticated videos and screenshots that have been geolocated.
Street fights have been ongoing in Kherson as units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Territorial Defense repel attacks.
On Tuesday, Russian forces launched a massive assault against the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv as bombs showered down across the city including on the state TV tower in Babyn Yar. At least five people were reported killed and five injured.
Russia warned Kyiv residents to flee their homes and rained rockets down on the city of Kharkiv, as Russian commanders who have failed to achieve a quick victory shifted their tactics to intensify the bombardment of Ukrainian cities.
With armored column miles long bearing down on the capital, Russia's defense ministry said it was planning to strike targets in Kyiv used by Ukraine's security service. Residents near such sites should evacuate their homes, it warned, while giving no information about where in the city of 3 million people those targets were located.
Rocket strikes on Kharkiv killed at least 10 people and wounded 35, Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser Anton Herashchenko said. Similar strikes had killed and wounded dozens in the city the previous day
A Kyiv-based TV tower was shelled, the Ukrainian President's Office reported on Tuesday. The office noted that there will temporarily be no media broadcasts, but in the near future backup broadcasting of some channels will be activated.
Mariupol City Council reported that the Russian army shelled residential areas in the city. As a result of the attack, several houses and a school in the same area were damaged, and the number of victims had yet to be determined.
A city hospital in Kharkiv was also shelled, also with an undetermined number of victims, Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the head of the Ukrainian President's Office, said on Monday.
"In Kharkiv, the city hospital has just been hit. The number of victims is currently being determined," Arestovich said on Ukraine's 24 TV channel.
He also added that Kharkiv, Kherson, and the north-western direction from Kyiv are currently the hottest battle zones. Sporadic clashes are taking place near Mariupol.
Russian forces are trying to regroup near Kyiv as the UAF are firing and counterattacking with artillery.
Four people were killed when homes in the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr were hit on Tuesday by a Russian cruise missile apparently aimed at a nearby air base, Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister, said on his Telegram channel.
He said the residential buildings near the base of the 95th Airborne Brigade in Zhytomyr, 120 km (75 miles) west of the capital Kyiv, had been set on fire.
"So far, four people have died. Including a child," he said.
Reuters contributed to this report.