The exodus out of Ukraine is the swiftest this century, the United Nations said Thursday, as Moscow said it was ready for more talks to end fighting even as its forces pressed their assaults on the country’s second-largest city and two strategic seaports.

Ukraine’s leader decried Russia’s escalation of attacks on crowded cities as a blatant terror campaign, while U.S. President Joe Biden warned that if the Russian leader didn’t “pay a price” for the invasion, the aggression wouldn’t stop with one country.

Russian shelling pounded the central square in Ukraine’s second-largest city and other civilian targets Tuesday and a 40-mile convoy of tanks and other vehicles threatened the capital — as Ukraine’s embattled president accused Moscow of resorting to terror tactics to press Europe’s largest ground war in generations.

As Russian troops were closing in on the Ukrainian capital, more and more Russians spoke out on Saturday, February 26, 2022, against the invasion, even as the government’s official rhetoric grew increasingly harsher.