The number of refugees who have left Ukraine for other European countries after the Russian invasion has already reached one million people, the United Nations Organization revealed on Wednesday.
It is, according to the international organization, the fastest exodus of this century and threatens to become the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the end of World War II.
Amid fierce Russian bombing of some of the major cities in the south, east and north of the country, including Kiev, the capital, and Kharkiv, the second most populous city,
2% of the Ukrainian population has fled in the first fight week.
[Russian troops take control of the city of Kherson in southeastern Ukraine: it is the largest city to fall]
A woman cries in the basement where she took refuge from Russian bombing, outside Kiev, Ukraine, on March 2, 2022. Vadim Ghirda / AP
One of the most dramatic scenarios of the exodus has occurred in Kharkiv, home to 1.5 million people who have now tried to escape street fighting crowding the city's train stations, often without even knowing where they were going, reported the news agency The Associated Press.
In a videotaped speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on his compatriots to keep up the resistance.
He promised that the invaders would not have "a moment of peace"
and described the Russian soldiers as "confused children who have been used."
Meanwhile, Moscow's isolation has deepened.
Most of the world has lined up against him at the United Nations to demand that he withdraw from Ukraine.
And the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into possible war crimes.
Children and pregnant women leave fathers and husbands behind: the plight of refugees from Ukraine grows
March 2, 202202:16
With fighting on multiple fronts across the country, the UK Defense Ministry said Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, was surrounded by Russian forces, while the mayor of another vital port, Kherson, a city Black Sea Navy of 280,000 residents, announced that it had been taken over by Russian invaders.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces have claimed to have taken full control of Kherson, which would make it the largest city to fall in the war.
Although a senior defense official has questioned that Moscow's control of this port is total.