Russia-Ukraine updates: US to ban Russian carriers from its airspace

At least 660,000 people have fled Ukraine into neighboring countries in the six days since the Russian invasion began, the U.N. Refugees Agency said. 

At the Polish border, UNHCR staff reported queues that were miles long. 

“Those who crossed the border said that they had been waiting up to 60 hours,” the agency said on Tuesday. “Most arrivals are women and children from all parts of Ukraine. Temperatures are freezing and many have reported spending days on the road waiting to cross.” 

Agency staff said people were waiting up to 20 hours to enter Romania. In Hungary, arrivals were “steady and waiting times vary.” The 37-mile trip between Odessa, Ukraine, and the border with Moldova was taking some refugees 24 hours, the agency said. And arrivals in Slovakia, where asylum laws were rapidly changed, were lower than elsewhere, agency staff said.  

An unknown number of Ukrainian citizens have also been displaced within the country, Filippo Grandi, the agency’s commissioner, told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday. 

“The situation is moving so quickly, and the levels of risk are so high by now, that it is impossible for humanitarians to distribute systematically the aid, the help that Ukrainians desperately need,” he said. 

The International Organisation for Migration said more than 470,000 people of various nationalities, “including a large number of overseas students and labour migrants,” are still in Ukraine.  

-ABC News’ Zoe Magee

Russia on Tuesday launched a major bombardment of Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, hitting a central square and its civilian administration building. 

Video from the scene shows a large projective hitting next to the regional state administration building on Kharkiv’s Freedom Square, causing a huge blast. Aftermath shot on phones from the scene and inside the building, show it shattered with debris strewn around. 

Ukraine’s emergency services ministry said at least six people, including one child were injured. It was unclear if anyone was killed.

Kharkiv Mayor Oleg Sinegubov confirmed the strike, calling it a “war crime.” 

Monday’s shelling followed a sustained bombardment of civilian areas yesterday and overnight in Kharkiv by Russian heavy artillery, including multiple rocket launchers and an alleged use of cluster munitions.

“What is happening in Kharkiv is a war crime!” Sinegubov wrote on Facebook. “The Russian enemy is shelling whole residential neighborhoods of Kharkiv, where there is no critical infrastructure, no Ukrainian armed forces positions, which the Russians could be targeting.” 

Sinegubov accused Russia of conducting the attacks during the day, when civilians were on the street. He said the city’s emergency services are unable to keep up with the number of attacks and injured.

So far at least 11 are dead, with dozens injured, he said.

Russian forces in Kharkiv appear to have shifted tactics to employing heavy artillery indiscriminately against the city, in an apparent effort to bombard and terrorize it into submission.

Sinegubov claimed the Russians were changing tactics because their offensive capabilities on the ground were running out and so they had nothing left but to launch aerial bombardments.

-ABC News’ Patrick Reevell

The Indian Embassy in Kyiv on Tuesday urged Indians still in the capital to “leave Kyiv urgently today.”

“All Indian nationals including students are advised to leave Kyiv urgently today,” the embassy said on Twitter. “Preferably by available trains or through any other means available.”

Solomiia Bobrovska, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, on Monday said Ukrainians would “fight to the end” as they defend Kyiv from a Russian invasion. 

“That's the mood of Ukrainians. We are staying behind altogether, and we do understand that with the total second line staying behind their shoulders. And I think we will fight until the end,” Bobrovska told ABC News’ Linsey Davis.