Ukrainians Flee as Russia Bombards Civilians

THE NEW YORK TIMES: President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Monday for an international tribunal to investigate Russia for war crimes. Delegations from Kyiv and Moscow failed to make progress in Belarus.

A picture released by the Ukrainian State Emergency Service of the area near the regional administration building that was damaged by a missile, according to city officials in Kharkiv on Tuesday. | Ukrainian State Emergency Service, via Reuters
A large explosion hit central Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, on Tuesday directly in front of the city’s administrative building, the country’s interior ministry said. The explosion created a huge fireball that appeared in a video to engulf several cars driving through an area called Freedom Square.

The cause of the blast and number of casualties were not immediately clear, though the city’s mayor said there were dead and wounded. Video of the aftermath showed a large crater in the middle of the city’s cobble-stoned central square.

“Barbaric Russian missile strikes on the central Freedom Square and residential districts of Kharkiv,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “Putin is unable to break Ukraine down. He commits more war crimes out of fury, murders innocent civilians.” An explosion rocks Kharkiv a day after a shelling in a residential neighborhood. » | Michael Schwirtz | Tuesday, March 1, 2022