Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia, which has launched an invasion of his country, of seeking to "erase" Ukrainians, their country and their history.
In a video address on Wednesday, the Ukrainian leader said a missile strike on a target at the site of a Holocaust massacre shows that "for many people in Russia our Kyiv is completely foreign".
The attack on Tuesday night damaged Kyiv's main television mast, which was built at Babi Yar, the site of the Second World War's biggest slaughter of Kyiv Jews and a place of memorial and pilgrimage.
Five people were killed in the strike itself, according to Ukrainian authorities, and for Mr Zelenskyy the symbolism of the location underlined the Russian threat to Ukrainian identity.
"They know nothing about our capital. About our history. But they have an order to erase our history. Erase our country. Erase us all," he said of President Vladimir Putin's invasion force.
The Ukrainian president complained that under Soviet rule, authorities had built the TV tower and a sports complex on a "special part of Europe, a place of prayer, a place of remembrance".
"Outbuildings. They built a park there. To erase the true history of Babi Yar ... This is beyond humanity," he declared.
People cross the destroyed bridge across the Irpin river in Irpin, Ukraine. Credit: Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images
"But they have an order to erase our history. Erase our country. Erase us all."
And he urged Jewish people around the world to speak up.
"I am now addressing all the Jews of the world. Don't you see what is happening? That is why it is very important that millions of Jews around the world not remain silent right now," he said.
"Nazism is born in silence. So shout about killings of civilians. Shout about the murders of Ukrainians."
'Protest against the war'
Mr Zelenskyy's comments came as jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny called on Russians to stage daily protests against Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine, his spokesperson wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.
"Alexei Navalny has called for people to go out and protest against the war every day at 7pm and on weekends at 2pm. The main squares of your towns, wherever you are," spokesperson Kira Yarmysh wrote.
Mr Navalny's movement had previously called for a campaign of civil disobedience to protest against Russia's invasion of its neighbour.
Mr Navalny, the most prominent opponent of Mr Putin, was jailed last year after he returned to Russia from Germany following his recovery from what Western laboratory tests established was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia. Russia denied carrying out such an attack.
Since then, authorities have clamped down even more tightly on his movement, and key figures have fled into exile after being designated by the authorities as "foreign agents".
New sanctions
European Union diplomats have approved new sanctions against Belarus for its supporting role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the French Presidency of the EU said on Wednesday.
EU diplomats approved new sanctions against Belarusian people who are playing a role in the attacks to Ukraine, the French Presidency said on Twitter.
Sanctions will also hit "some economic sectors, and in particular timber, steel and potassium," the statement said.
An EU official said this week that one of the aims of the new sanctions against Minsk was to stop exports of any further Belarusian goods to the EU, on top of those already subject to sanctions previously imposed by the EU after the President Alexander Lukashenko crushed protests following elections in August 2020.
