KYIV, Ukraine -- Russian forces escalated their attacks on crowded urban areas Tuesday in what Ukraine's leader called a blatant campaign of terror, while U.S. President Joe Biden vowed to make his Russian counterpart "pay a price" for the invasion.
"Nobody will forgive. Nobody will forget," Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed after the bloodshed on the central square in Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city, and the bombing of a TV tower in the capital.
Zelenskyy said 16 children had been killed around Ukraine on Monday and he mocked Russia's claim that it is going after only military targets.
"Where are the children? What kind of military factories do they work at? What tanks are they going at?" Zelenskyy said.
Biden used his first State of the Union address to highlight the resolve of a reinvigorated Western alliance that has worked to rearm the Ukrainian military and adopt tough sanctions, which he said have left Russian President Vladimir Putin "isolated in the world more than he has ever been."
"Throughout our history we've learned this lesson -- when dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos," Biden said. "They keep moving. And the costs and threats to America and the world keep rising."
Biden devoted the first 12 minutes of his Tuesday evening address to Ukraine, with lawmakers of both parties repeatedly rising to their feet and applauding as he praised the bravery of Ukraine's people and condemned Putin's assault.
As Biden spoke, a 40-mile convoy of hundreds of Russian tanks and other vehicles advanced slowly on Kyiv, the capital city of nearly 3 million people, in what the West feared was a bid by Putin to topple the government and install a Kremlin-friendly regime.
The invading forces also pressed their assault on other towns and cities, including the strategic ports of Odesa and Mariupol in the south.
Day six of the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II found Russia increasingly isolated, beset by the sanctions that have thrown its economy into turmoil and left the country practically friendless, apart from a few nations such as China, Belarus and North Korea.
As the fighting in Ukraine raged, the death toll remained unclear. One senior Western intelligence official estimated that more than 5,000 Russian soldiers had been captured or killed. Ukraine gave no overall estimate of troop losses.
The United Nations has recorded more than 130 civilian deaths since the beginning of the fighting last week, including 13 children, mostly because of shelling and rocket fire. The true human toll is likely far much higher, the U.N.'s high commissioner for human rights said.
A CHANGE FEARED
In its most recent battlefield update, the British Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces continue to hold the cities of Kharkiv, Kherson and Mariupol, but all three "are now likely encircled by Russian forces," and air and artillery attacks on urban areas are intensifying.
Many military experts worry that Russia may be shifting tactics. Moscow's strategy in Chechnya and Syria was to use artillery and air bombardments to pulverize cities and crush fighters' resolve.
Ukrainian authorities said five people were killed in the attack on the TV tower, which is a couple of miles from central Kyiv and a short walk from numerous apartment buildings. A TV control room and power substation were hit, and at least some Ukrainian channels briefly stopped broadcasting, officials said.
The bombing came after Russia announced it would target transmission facilities used by Ukraine's intelligence agency. It urged people living near such places to leave their homes.
Zelenskyy's office also reported a powerful missile attack on the site of the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial near the tower. A spokesman 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.
In Kharkiv, with a population of about 1.5 million, at least six people were killed when the region's Soviet-era 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 in the attack. The entrance to the consulate was between a jewelry store and a bank.
The attack on Freedom Square -- Ukraine's largest plaza, and 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.
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the city's opera and ballet theater were also hit in Russian attacks, and residential neighborhoods had been shelled with what local officials suspected were cluster munitions.
Terekhov said the fighting had impeded the arrival of food and medical supplies, and artillery had struck transformer stations, leaving much of the city without power. Local authorities were hanging on, he said, but were surrounded by Russian forces.
"This is very serious, and people are in a state of shock because they could have never thought this would happen," Terekhov said in a phone interview.
The bombardment blew out windows and walls of buildings that ring the massive square, which was piled high with debris and dust. Inside one building, chunks of plaster were scattered, and doors, ripped from their hinges, lay across hallways.
"People are under the ruins. We have pulled out bodies," said Yevhen Vasylenko, an emergency official.
Zelenskyy pronounced the attack on the square "frank, undisguised terror" and a war crime. "This is state terrorism of the Russian Federation," he said.
In an emotional appeal to the European Parliament later, Zelenskyy said: "We are fighting also to be equal members of Europe. I believe that today we are showing everybody that is what we are."
Another Russian airstrike hit a residential area near a hospital in the city of Zhytomyr, Mayor Serih Sukhomlin said in a Facebook video.
Ukraine's emergency services said the Tuesday's strike killed at least two people, set three homes on fire and broke the windows in the hospital. About 85 miles west of Kyiv, Zhytomyr is the home of the elite 95th Air Assault Brigade, which may have been the intended target.
Human Rights Watch said it documented a cluster bomb attack outside a hospital in Ukraine's east in recent days. Local residents also reported the use of such weapons in Kharkiv and the village of Kiyanka. The Kremlin denied using cluster bombs.
Russian and local forces are now battling over the southern city of Kherson, whose mayor, Ihor Kolykaev, warned residents in a Facebook post to stay indoors and pleaded with Russian authorities to spare their lives.
"We are NOT military! But I will keep the city and its life going as long as I can," he wrote. "If the soldiers of the Russian Federation and their leadership hear me, I ask: leave our city, stop shelling the civilian population. You already took everything you wanted, including human lives. God be your judge."
Cluster bombs shoot smaller "bomblets" over a large area, many of which fail to explode until long after they've been dropped. If their use in Ukraine is confirmed, that would represent a new level of brutality in the war and could lead to even further isolation of Russia.
The first talks between Russia and Ukraine since the invasion were held Monday, but ended with only an agreement to talk again. On Tuesday, though, Zelenskyy said Russia should stop bombing first.
"As for dialogue, I think yes, but stop bombarding people first and start negotiating afterwards," he told CNN.
Moscow made new threats of escalation, days after raising the specter of nuclear war. A top Kremlin official warned that the West's "economic war" against Russia could turn into a "real one."
Inside Russia, a top radio station critical of the Kremlin was taken off the air after authorities threatened to shut it down over its coverage of the invasion. Among other things, the Kremlin is not allowing the fighting to be referred to as an "invasion" or "war."
660,000 FLEE
Roughly 660,000 people have fled Ukraine, and countless others have taken shelter underground. Bomb damage has left hundreds of thousands of families without drinking water, U.N. humanitarian coordinator Martin Griffiths said.
"It is a nightmare, and it seizes you from the inside very strongly. This cannot be explained with words," said Kharkiv resident Ekaterina Babenko, taking shelter in a basement with neighbors for a fifth straight day. "We have small children, elderly people, and frankly speaking it is very frightening."
Also on Tuesday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally, called for Russia to bring more S-400 air defense systems to his country, Interfax reported. Russian forces have poured into Ukraine from Belarus, which hosted joint military exercises with Russia in the weeks before Putin's assault.
Last month, Belarus approved a referendum abandoning the country's status as a nonnuclear state. Lukashenko has since raised the idea of moving Russian nuclear equipment into Belarus.
As for the Russians' advance on the capital, the leading edge of the convoy was 17 miles from the center of the city, according to satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies.
A senior U.S. defense official said that Russia's military progress -- including by the massive convoy -- has slowed, plagued by logistical and supply problems. Some Russian military columns have run out of gas and food, the official said, and morale has suffered as a result.
Overall, the Russian military has been stalled by fierce resistance on the ground and a surprising inability to completely dominate Ukraine's airspace.
The immense convoy, with vehicles packed together along narrow roads, would seemingly be "a big fat target" for Ukrainian forces, the senior Western intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.
"But it also shows you that the Russians feel pretty comfortable being out in the open in these concentrations because they feel that they're not going to come under air attack or rocket or missile attack," the official said.
Ukrainians have used whatever they had to try to stop the Russian advance.
On a highway between Odesa and Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, residents piled tractor tires filled with sand and topped with sandbags to block convoys. In Kyiv, volunteers and soldiers have dug trenches and assembled barricades, staging antiaircraft guns and antitank rockets in the streets ahead of what promises to be a punishing urban battle.
Information for this article was contributed by Yuras Karmanau, Jim Heintz, Vladimir Isachenkov, Dasha Litvinova, Mstyslav Chernov, Sergei Grits, Robert Burns, Zeke Miller, Eric Tucker, Francesca Ebel, Josef Federman, Andrew Drake, Lorne Cook and staff members of The Associated Press and by Isabelle Khurshudyan, Missy Ryan, Dan Lamothe, Sudarsan Raghavan, Siobhan O'Grady, Whitney Shefte, Kostiantyn Khudov, David Stern and Karla Adam of The Washington Post.
Ukrainian army soldiers, left, rest while others eat near the front line with Russian troops in northern Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Ricard Garcia Vilanova)
Refugees from Ukraine rest at the railway station in Przemysl, Poland, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Ambassadors from dozens of countries on Monday backed a proposal demanding that Russia halt its attack on Ukraine, as the U.N. General Assembly held a rare emergency session during a day of frenzied and sometimes fractious diplomacy surrounding the five-day-old war. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Ukrainian families say goodbye as they prepare to board a bus to Poland at Lviv bus main station, western Ukraine, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Russian shelling pounded civilian targets in Ukraine's second-largest city Tuesday and a 40-mile convoy of tanks and other vehicles threatened the capital — tactics Ukraine’s embattled president said were designed to force him into concessions in Europe’s largest ground war in generations. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
People shop next to nearly empty shelves at a market in Nikolaev, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Russia on Tuesday stepped up shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, pounding civilian targets there. Casualties mounted and reports emerged that more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers were killed after Russian artillery recently hit a military base in Okhtyrka, a city between Kharkiv and Kyiv, the capital. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
People look at the gutted remains of Russian military vehicles on a road in the town of Bucha, close to the capital Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Russia on Tuesday stepped up shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, pounding civilian targets there. Casualties mounted and reports emerged that more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers were killed after Russian artillery recently hit a military base in Okhtyrka, a city between Kharkiv and Kyiv, the capital. (AP Photo/Serhii Nuzhnenko)
An armed man stands by the remains of a Russian military vehicle in Bucha, close to the capital Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Russia on Tuesday stepped up shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, pounding civilian targets there. Casualties mounted and reports emerged that more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers were killed after Russian artillery recently hit a military base in Okhtyrka, a city between Kharkiv and Kyiv, the capital. (AP Photo/Serhii Nuzhnenko)
A man walks past a queue of cars heading to the Poland border near Shehyni, western Ukraine, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Russian shelling pounded civilian targets in Ukraine's second-largest city again, and a 40-mile convoy of tanks and other vehicles threatened the capital. Ukraine's embattled president said the tactics were designed to force him into concessions in Europe's largest ground war in generations. (AP Photo/Pavlo Palamarchuk)
Medical workers operate on people injured by shelling in a residential area at a maternity hospital converted into a medical ward in Mariupol, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Russian strikes on the key southern port city of Mariupol seriously wounded several people. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Ambulance paramedics move an injured man on a stretcher, wounded by shelling in a residential area, at the maternity hospital converted into a medical ward and used as a bomb shelter in Mariupol, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Russian strikes on the key southern port city of Mariupol seriously wounded several people. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
