RUSSIA’s military claimed control of Ukraine’s key port city of Kherson today as both sides said they were ready for a second round of talks to resolve the conflict.

Kherson, with a population of nearly 250,000 just north of Crimea, the peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014 and then voted to unite with it.

But local authorities said that the city was still under Ukrainian control.

Russian forces also appeared to be surrounding key cities including Kharkiv, on the border of Russia, and the port city of Mariupol, which the deputy mayor Sergiy Orlov said was under constant shelling.

A Ukrainian army statement said that Russian airborne troops who landed in Kharkiv attacked a local hospital, while one ministerial official claimed that there were “practically no areas left” in the city unshelled.

Russia has said it is only targeting Ukraine’s military infrastructure, air defence and air forces with high-precision weapons.

A Kremlin spokesman said that the Russian delegation was ready to resume talks after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zekensky said that Russia must stop the bombing before they agreed to another meeting.

The meeting was expected to take place after the Morning Star went to print.

As of the seventh day into the war today, over 874,000 people were expected to have fled Ukraine.

The United Nations refugee agency has warned that the number could cross the 1 million mark soon.

At least 136 civilians — including 13 children — have been killed in the war, the UN has said, acknowledging that the real number is likely much higher.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said that over 2,000 civilians have died, but the figure could not be verified independently.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Orlov said: “The situation in Mariupol is awful, we are near to a humanitarian catastrophe.

“We have been under more than 15 hours of continuous shelling without any pause.”

Mr Orlov said that Russian forces were several miles from the city on all sides and strikes on key infrastructure had cut water and power supplies to parts of the city.

He said that one densely populated residential district on the city’s left bank had been “nearly totally destroyed.”

“We cannot count the number of victims there, but we believe that at least hundreds of people are dead. We cannot go in to retrieve the bodies,” he said.

“My father lives there, I cannot reach him, I don’t know if he is alive or dead.”