Even as rescue workers took boats through flooded streets to get people to safety, Russian forces assailed the city on Thursday afternoon. Shelling struck near an evacuation point at the heart of Kherson, close to where Mr. Zelensky had stood hours earlier, and sent hundreds of people ducking for cover in floodwaters that have loosed land mines and mixed with toxic material. “There was nowhere to hide,” said Serhiy Ludensky, a volunteer from an animal care center, who was on a boat near a flooded square when the shelling struck. The people on the boat managed to break down the door of a flooded dormitory to take shelter there until the explosions stopped. The monthslong bombardment of Kherson, which Russian soldiers once occupied in southern Ukraine, has not let up since an explosion on Tuesday at the Kakhovka dam, up the Dnipro River.

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Persons: Volodymyr Zelensky, Zelensky, ”, Serhiy Ludensky Locations: Ukraine, Kherson, Dnipro