A picture shows damages after the shelling by Russian forces of Constitution Square in Kharkiv, Ukraine s second-biggest city, on March 2, 2022. AFP
Zelenskyy's office told The Associated Press that it could not comment on the situation there while the battle was still being waged.
Meanwhile, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, says troops have taken the Ukrainian port city of Kherson, a claim that the Ukrainian military denies.
But the mayor of Kherson, Igor Kolykhaev, said Russian soldiers were in the city and came to the city administration building. He said he asked them not to shoot civilians and to allow them to gather up the bodies from the streets.
"I simply asked them not to shoot at people,'' Mayor Igor Kolykhaev said in a statement. "We don't have any Ukrainian forces in the city, only civilians and people here who want to LIVE.''
Kherson, a city of 300,000, is strategically located on the banks of the Dnieper River near where it flows into the Black Sea. If Russian troops take the city, they could unblock a water canal and restore water supplies to the Crimean Peninsula.
The battle in the Kherson region began last Thursday, the first day of the invasion, and by the next day, the Russian forces were able to take a bridge that connects the city with the territory on the western bank.
A senior U.S. defence official said Wednesday that they have seen claims that the Russians have taken Kherson, but that the Ukrainian military is rejecting that claim.
"Our view is that Kherson is very much a contested city at this point,'' said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to make military assessments.
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