KYIV: Kyiv, bracing for a potentially catastrophic Russian attack, is the spiritual heart of Ukraine.
Among the sites at risk in the Ukrainian capital are the nation's most sacred Orthodox shrines, dating back nearly 1,000 years to the dawn of Christianity in the region.
The sites, along with other landmark shrines in Kyiv, are religiously significant to both Ukrainian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox.
They also stand as powerful symbols in the quarrel over whether the two groups are parts of a single people, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed, or are distinct but related Slavic nations.
The landmarks include the golden domed St.Sophia's Cathedral and the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, a sprawling underground and above-ground complex also known as the Monastery of the Caves.
Others include the multi-towered St.
Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery and St. Andrew's Church.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said Russian forces damaged another monument, Ukraine's main Holocaust memorial, Babi Yar, prompting international condemnation.
"What will be next if even Babi Yar (is hit)" asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday.
"What other military' objects, NATO bases' are threatening Russia? St. Sophia's Cathedral, Lavra, Andrew's Church?" There is no indication the Russians intentionally targeted Babi Yar.
Nor is there any confirmation that the Russians plan to target any of the sacred sites in Kyiv.
But civilian buildings have already been hit in other cities, and Kyiv's major shrines sit in elevated locations that could leave them especially vulnerable.
Case in point: The Assumption Cathedral in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, was damaged in the recent attacks, reportedly with stained-glass windows broken and other decorations damaged.
The cathedral, which is under the Moscow-affiliated Orthodox church, was Kharkiv's tallest building until sometime in the 21st century.
The risk is even greater in Kyiv.
"We're talking about a very old city," said Jacob Lassin, a postdoctoral research scholar at the Arizona State University's Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies.
"The center part is densely packed. Even if you're trying to hit one thing, you could easily hit something else."
The symbolic value of the shrines is powerful even to people who don't share the religious faith they commemorate.
"The idea that the main symbol that stood in your city for 1,000 years could be at risk or could be destroyed is very frightening," Lassin said.
The symbols matter not only to the Ukrainian people but to Putin, too.
He justified the invasion with baseless claims he was countering "neo-Nazism" in Ukraine, this in a country with a Jewish president.
Babi Yar, a ravine in Kyiv, is where more than 33,000 Jews were killed within 48 hours in 1941 when the city was under Nazi occupation.
The killing was carried out by SS troops along with local collaborators.
It was one of the largest mass killings at a single location during World War II, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
It is "at once an accursed and a sacred place," American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris said.
Just last year, Zelenskyy took part in the inaugural ceremony of a memorial there.
Whether Kyiv's Orthodox shrines come under direct attack or receive collateral damage, such an action would be a "total refutation" of another of Putin's claims, to be defending Orthodox Ukrainians loyal to Moscow's patriarch, Lassin said.
"It would literally be destroying the main seat of Russian Orthodoxy according to his own rhetoric," Lassin said.
The shrines' oldest parts date back to the medieval Kievan Rus kingdom, soon after its adoption of Christianity under Prince Vladimir in the 10th century.
Putin has claimed the kingdom is the common ancestor of today's Russia and Ukraine.
Ukrainians counter that theirs is a distinct nation now under fratricidal attack from its Slavic neighbor.
The cathedral and nearby monastic complex represent "a masterpiece of human creative genius in both its architectural conception and its remarkable decoration," says a summary by UNESCO, which lists them as World Heritage Sites.
The cathedral, built under Prince Yaroslav the Wise in the 11th century, was modeled after the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the spiritual and architectural heart of medieval Orthodoxy.
The Kyiv cathedral includes mosaics and frescoes as old as 1,000 years, and it was a model for later churches in the region, according to UNESCO.
"The huge pantheon of Christian saints depicted in the cathedral has an unrivaled multiplicity among Byzantine monuments of that time," UNESCO says.
The Monastery of the Caves, including underground monastic cells, tombs of saints and above-ground churches built across nearly nine centuries, was hugely influential in spreading Orthodox Christianity, according to UNESCO.
Both complexes were endangered and at times damaged by centuries of warfare.
St. Sophia's, sacred both to Ukraine's two main rival Orthodox churches and to Catholics, is currently a museum and isn't normally used for religious services.
Two of the landmarks are associated with opposing sides in the schism within Ukrainian Orthodoxy.
The monastic complex is overseen by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is affiliated with the Orthodox patriarch of Moscow, though it has broad autonomy.
St. Michael's is the base for the more nationalist Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
But the Ukrainian leaders of both Orthodox groups have harshly criticized the Russian invasion.
If Kyiv's landmarks are damaged or destroyed, "could it potentially damage morale? Yes," Lassin said.
"Could it potentially galvanize people to be more united? Absolutely. What I can say is the Ukrainian people are extremely resilient and are fighting back through all of this."
Russia's foreign minister says that Moscow is ready for talks to end the fighting in Ukraine but will continue to press its effort to destroy Ukraine's military infrastructure.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the Russian delegation submitted its demands to Ukrainian negotiators earlier this week and is now waiting for Kyiv's response in talks set for Thursday.
Lavrov said that the West has continuously armed Ukraine, trained its troops and built up bases there to turn Ukraine into a bulwark against Russia.
Russia says that made Ukraine a threat to its security, forcing it to act.
The U.S. and its allies have insisted that NATO is a defensive alliance that doesn't pose a threat to Russia.
Lavrov strongly rejected that, saying that the West has turned Ukraine into a "bridgehead for undermining everything that is Russian. Israel's prime minister is calling on world leaders to get Russia and Ukraine "out of the battlefield and to the negotiating table" after a week of fighting.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke in English on Thursday at a cyber tech conference in Tel Aviv, less than a day after he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Israel maintains good relations with both countries.
It has condemned Russia's invasion and sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine, but the same time has avoided taking a stance that might anger Moscow.
Russia and Israel cooperate on military operations in Syria.
Bennett said of the situation in Ukraine that "things are looking bad on the ground right now, but it's important to understand that if world leaders don't act quickly it can get much worse."
Russian forces have seized a strategic Ukrainian seaport and besieged another as part of efforts to cut the country off from its coastline, even as Moscow said Thursday it was ready for talks to end the fighting that has sent more than 1 million people fleeing over Ukraine's borders.
The Russian military said it had control of Kherson, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed that forces have taken over local government headquarters in the Black Sea port of 280,000, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion began a week ago.
Elsewhere, the Russians pressed their offensive on multiple fronts, though a column of tanks and other vehicles has apparently been stalled for days outside the capital of Kyiv.
Heavy fighting continued Thursday on the outskirts of another strategic port city on the Azov Sea, Mariupol, plunging it into darkness, isolation and fear.
Electricity and phone connections are largely down, and homes and shops are facing food and water shortages.
Without phone connections, medics didn't know where to take the wounded.
In just seven days of fighting, more than 2% of Ukraine's population has been forced out of the country, according to the tally the U.N. refugee agency released to The Associated Press.
The mass evacuation could be seen in Kharkiv, a city of about 1.4 million people and Ukraine's second-largest.
Residents desperate to escape falling shells and bombs crowded the city's train station and pressed onto trains, not always knowing where they were headed.
At least 227 civilians have been killed and another 525 wounded in that time, according to the latest figures from the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
It acknowledges that is a vast undercount, and Ukraine earlier said more than 2,000 civilians have died.
That figure could not be independently verified.
As the toll of war mounted, a second round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations was expected later Thursday in neighboring Belarus, though the two sides appeared to have little common ground.
"We are ready to conduct talks, but we will continue the operation because we won't allow Ukraine to preserve a military infrastructure that threatens Russia," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, repeating an accusation Moscow has repeatedly used to justify its invasion.
Lavrov said that the West has continuously armed Ukraine, trained its troops and built up bases there to turn Ukraine into a bulwark against Russia.
The U.S. and its allies have insisted that NATO is a defensive alliance that doesn't pose a threat to Russia.
And the West fears Russia's invasion is meant to overthrow Ukraine's government and install a friendly government, though Lavrov said Moscow would let the Ukrainians choose what government they should have.
Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier raised the specter of nuclear war, putting his country's nuclear forces on high alert, but his foreign minister shrugged off questions of whether Russia could escalate the conflict with nuclear weapons, saying such talk comes from the West.
In Kherson, the Russians took over the regional administration headquarters, Hennady Lahuta, the governor of the region, said Thursday, while adding that he and other officials were continuing to perform their duties and provide assistance to the population.
Kherson's mayor, Igor Kolykhaev, previously said that the national flag was still flying, but that there were no Ukrainian troops in the city.
Britain's defense secretary said it was possible the Russians had taken over, though not yet verified.
The mayor said the city would maintain a strict curfew and require pedestrians to walk in groups no larger than two, obey commands to stop and not to "provoke the troops."
"The flag flying over us is Ukrainian," he wrote on Facebook.
"And for it to stay that way, these demands must be observed."
Earlier Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russian land forces have stalled and Moscow is now unleashing air attacks, but that they are being parried by Ukrainian defense systems, including in Kherson.
"Kyiv withstood the night and another missile and bomb attack. Our air defenses worked," he said.
"Kherson, Izyum, all the other cities that the occupiers hit from the air did not give up anything."
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said explosions heard overnight in the Ukrainian capital were Russian missiles being shot down by air defense systems.
From Kherson, Russian troops appeared to roll toward Mykolaiv, another major Black Sea port and shipbuilding center to the west along the coast.
The regional governor, Vitaliy Kim, said that big convoys of Russian troops are advancing on the city but said that they will likely need to regroup before trying to take it over.
A group of Russian amphibious landing vessels is also heading toward the port of Odesa, farther west, the Ukrainian military said.
Moscow's isolation deepened when most of the world lined up against it at the United Nations to demand it withdraw from Ukraine.
The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into possible war crimes.
And in a stunning reversal, the International Paralympic Committee banned Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Winter Paralympic Games.
Russia reported its military casualties Wednesday for the first time in the war, saying nearly 500 of its troops have been killed and almost 1,600 wounded.
Ukraine did not disclose its own military losses.
Ukraine's military general staff said in a Facebook post that Russia's forces had suffered some 9,000 casualties in the fighting.
It did not clarify if that figure included both killed and wounded soldiers.
In a video address to the nation early Thursday, Zelenskyy praised his country's resistance.
"We are a people who in a week have destroyed the plans of the enemy," he said.
"They will have no peace here. They will have no food. They will have here not one quiet moment.