completely reconstitute the forces that were damaged and destroyed in some cases in the kyiv area, so there are some significant areas where they really might have some difficulties. but the key thing to remember is the ukrainians have to be careful not to get encircled in this region. that is the key area that they need to really watch out for. colonel leighton there. and clarissa ward has a close-up look at the damage. reporter: and there is no rest at night for the people of kharkiv. flares light up the sky as artillery thunders through the air. for nearly nine weeks, ukraine s second largest city has been shelled relentlessly. only by day do you see the full-scale of the destruction.
clarissa ward, cnn, kharkiv. tuesday was the 36th anniversary of the chernobyl disaster. and rafael rossi, director general of the national atomic energy agency visited the infamous plant. remember only a few weeks ago it was occupied by russian forces. he praised the plant operators who kept working amid the invasion possibly averting a new disaster. and he also met with ukrainian president zelenskyy in kyiv where the two men held a joint press conference. and the end that they would work to restore capacity. and we ll have much more ahead on our breaking news coverage over the war in ukraine at the top of the hour on early start. but for now, max foster has our other top stories. and up next, text messages obtained by cnn are shining new
this one will. hour by hour, everything changes. things are moving fast enough here that just 24 hours ago, a village about four kilometers in that direction was the meeting point from which people would get evacuated. now it seems to be under fire and you just see panicked locals rushing into collect their relatives. distant tree lines are packed with troops. the blue horizon sometimes pot marked by smoke. there is a number of rockets here and you can see the damage of what they have done before. but somewhere like this has felt to 134 degree that it survived the worst of the war. but now in this second phase, brutality of the forces is essentially coming straight their way. the flag flies still in the spot here where lenin used to stand and it needs an army to hold it in place. people don t want and cannot live under occupation, he says.
encountered a provocation in the village of bucha to which the russian army has nothing to do. bucha of course is not the only ukrainian city where russian forces are accused of carrying out atrocities. these are new satellite images from just outside the city of mariupol in the country s south. the city s mayor says it shows a third mass grave they have discovered and he says russia is forcing civilians to dig them in exchange for food. vladimir putin claims it is actually ukraine putting civilians in harms way. here is how he described what is going on there. translator: the situation there is difficult and tragic, but, but, it is simple. there is no fighting there. it is over. there is no fighting inmariupol. it has stopped. meanwhile there are fears that pro-russian elements in the southern city of kherson will
t this neighborhood was hit repeatedly last month as russian forces tried to push into the city. no site was spared. not even the local nursery school. so it looks like this was some kind of a dormitory. you can see children s beds here all around. and then in the next room over there was their classroom. their shoes still litter the locker room. mercifully the school had been evacuated, so no children were killed in the strikes. the mayor of kharkiv says that 67 schools and 54 kindergartens have been hit here since the war began. and what is so striking when you look around is that it is so clearly not a military target. this is a residential neighborhood. just a few blocks away, the bare