Kyiv and Kharkiv came under fresh attack overnight as residential homes were bombarded with shelling ahead of a feared second-wave offensive.
Ukraine’s national security service said Russian forces are firing rockets at a physics institute in the city of Kharkiv that contains nuclear material and a reactor.
The security service said a strike on the nuclear facility could lead to “large-scale ecological disaster”.
The service said on Facebook on Sunday that the Russians were firing from Grad launchers. Those missiles do not have precise targeting, raising concern that one would go astray.
Fire is seen in Mariupol at a residential area after shelling amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine March 3rd, 2022.
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Multiple social media videos showed a number of explosions in the skyline at night in Ukraine's second city Kharkiv.
One video even showed a high-rise block of flats being blasted in a huge orange flash.
Another clip shows a Russian jet being destroyed in the sky by a Ukrainian rocket.
Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskyy reiterated a request for foreign protectors to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which Nato so far has ruled out because of concerns such an action would draw the West directly into the war.
“The world is strong enough to close our skies,” Mr Zelenskyy said in a video address on Sunday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Saturday that Moscow would consider a third-party declaration to close Ukrainian airspace to be a hostile act.
The outskirts of Kyiv, Chernihiv in the north, Mykolaiv in the south, and Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, faced stepped-up shelling late on Sunday, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich said. Heavy artillery hit residential areas in Kharkiv and shelling damaged a television tower, according to local officials.
“This is likely to represent an effort to break Ukrainian morale,” the UK Ministry of Defence said of Russian tactics as the war entered its 12th day Monday.
Fighting has caused 1.5 million people to flee the country, which the head of the UN refugee agency called “the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War 2”.
Russia has made significant advances in southern Ukraine and along the coast, but many of its efforts have become stalled, including an immense military convoy that has been almost motionless for days north of Kyiv.