At least 21 people were killed and 112 wounded in shelling in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in the last 24 hours, regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on Wednesday.

The authorities have said Russian missile attacks hit the centre of Ukraine's second-largest city, including residential areas and the regional administration building.

"112 people were injured in a day, 21 died. Data will be updated," Oleh Sinehubov, Head of Kharkiv's Regional State Administration, said in a Facebook post.

"We were constantly under the influence of enemy fire, aviation, jet artillery, and gun firearms. In the second half of the day, the northeast and northern sectors of the city were attacked by mechanized enemy units. All attacks are rejected, Russian enemy suffered significant losses, only the equipment is more than 40 units, positions are retained," he added.

He also confirmed a Russian attack on a military hospital, reports newsnine.com

It was reported earlier that Russian paratroops had landed in Kharkiv and were attacking the Military Medical Clinical Center of the Northern Region.

Naveen Shekharappa Gyanagouda, a young medical student from Karnataka, was killed in Russian shelling in Ukraine’s Kharkiv on Tuesday, becoming the first Indian casualty of an invasion his country will not condemn.

Naveen was confirmed killed by external affairs ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi on Tuesday afternoon without naming him. By the time the official confirmation came, the news had already broken as students stranded in Ukraine began sharing the information on social media.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have fled the fighting since Putin ordered a full-scale invasion nearly a week ago, with a miles-long Russian military convoy north of Kyiv readying to advance on the capital.

Russian forces had taken control of Kherson, a city of nearly a quarter million people just north of Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, a Russian defence ministry spokesperson said.