Russia claims control over strategic Ukraine port city Kherson in southern part of country

Russia on Wednesday claimed to have taken control of Kherson, Ukraine, seven days into Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of the country. 

Kherson, which is estimated to have about a quarter of a million residents, is a strategic city in southern Ukraine located on a river leading to the Black Sea.

"The Russian divisions of the armed forces have taken the regional center of Kherson under full control," Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in televised remarks, translated by to German state-ran outlet DW.

Deputy head of Kherson's emergency aid center Inesa Chamlai told the BBC that Russian troops had stopped his agency from bringing a 55-year-old man who had stepped on a land mine to the hospital.

"Our ambulance team was dispatched but was then prevented by Russian troops from taking the man to hospital," Chamlai said. "The soldiers ordered to bring him back to his house where he will definitely die."

The city is just north of Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

"I get videos of our friends, community members, who are in all sorts of places in the city. Yes, the Russians are clearly on the streets, in the city center, with a lot of tools, armored vehicles and tanks," a Rabbi in Kherson, Yosef Yitzhak Wolff, told Ynet shortly after Russian forces took control of the city.