Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced that one person was killed and one wounded in Russian air strikes on the capital, while the city's military administration urged residents not to return to their homes for the time being.
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that its long-range, high-precision air weapons destroyed armored vehicles manufacturing sites in Kyiv, a day after it warned that it would intensify its raids on the capital if the latter continued to target the Russian border areas, as it put it.
The ministry's spokesman Igor Konashenkov noted that during the night 16 Ukrainian military sites in the Baltava, Odessa and Donbass regions were targeted with long-range missiles.
For its part, the Kyiv military administration urged residents of the capital to avoid returning to their homes for the time being after the latest Russian strikes, and not to ignore the sirens.
In Kharkiv, to the east, the Ukrainian General Staff reported that the Russian army was massing 22 tactical battalions towards Izyum to maintain the areas it controlled.
Spokesman for the authority Oleksandr Shpotun said that the Russian forces are concentrating their efforts to seize the cities of Mariupol, Popasna and Robyzhny.
And the Russian Defense Ministry published pictures that it said were of the progress of its forces in Kharkiv.
The photos show the crossing of Russian forces into the areas they said they had "liberated" from what they call Ukrainian nationalists in the province.
It also shows the securing of Russian war helicopters for the transit of military convoys to the places they controlled.
The head of the regional administration in Kharkiv Province said that a Russian missile targeted one of the central areas of the city of Kharkiv, killing one person and wounding 18 others.
Meanwhile, the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office said that Russian missile strikes targeted two areas on the outskirts of the city of Kharkiv, which left two dead and 18 wounded.
Ukrainian tally
In a related context, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that between 2,500 and 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed so far in the war with Russia, and 10,000 have been wounded.
In an interview with CNN, Zelensky warned that Putin may resort to the use of tactical nuclear weapons because he does not value the lives of the Ukrainian people, as he put it.
Zelensky repeated his warning that Russia may resort to the use of a tactical nuclear weapon after the losses it suffered during the war (Reuters)
In turn, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Irina Vereshchuk announced that Russia is holding about 700 Ukrainian soldiers, compared to 700 Russian soldiers detained by the Ukrainian army.
Vereshchuk accused the Russian forces of detaining 1,000 Ukrainian civilians, more than half of them women, stressing that these would not be exchanged for Russian soldiers.
It also accused Russia of not complying with the Geneva Convention for the Treatment of Prisoners, saying that it is exchanging prisoners selectively, as it put it.
American expectation
As the battles continued on the ground, NBC quoted US military officials as expecting the next phase of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine to begin in the next few days.
Officials told the network that the Russian military may start moving some of its forces to Ukraine as soon as the end of this week or the beginning of next week.
For his part, a senior US military official said that US officials believe that Russia may return its forces to Ukraine and begin the offensive before it is ready to fight again.
The British newspaper, The Times, quoted Ukrainian military leaders as saying that British special forces trained local forces in Kyiv for the first time since the start of the war with Russia.
The source pointed out that officers from two battalions stationed in and around the capital, Kyiv, said that they had received military training, one last week and the other the week before.
phone conversation
In another context, the Kremlin announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and discussed with him the situation in Ukraine and the process of settling the conflict in Yemen.
According to the Kremlin, Putin stressed the importance of coordination and positive joint action between Moscow and Riyadh within the framework of "OPEC Plus" in order to ensure the stability of global oil market prices.
According to an official Saudi statement, the Saudi Crown Prince affirmed the Kingdom's support for efforts that lead to a political solution to the crisis in Ukraine in order to achieve security and stability, as he put it.