KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he has signed an application for Ukraine to join the European Union.

The action comes five days after Russia invaded its smaller neighbor, touching off widespread international condemnation and offers of military assistance from the 27-member nation EU and elsewhere.

Andrii Sybiha, head of Zelenskyy’s office, said on his official Facebook page that the documents “are on the way to Brussels.”

Photos of Zelenskyy were posted in Facebook. He was flanked by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and chairman of the parliament Ruslan Stefanchuk.

“The history is being created now,” the post said.

The application was largely symbolic, however. The process could take years. EU membership must be unanimously approved by all members. Ukraine has been weakened by endemic corruption for many years, making the benchmarks of approval extremely hard to reach.

Ukrainian authorities say at least 44 people have been wounded in fighting in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, and that seven of them died in hospitals.

It wasn’t clear if the casualties, which covered the past 24 hours, were all civilians. The state emergencies agency said the casualties could be higher because the damage from Monday’s shelling of residential areas is still being assessed.

Ukrainian social networks featured videos showing residential quarters hit by a series of powerful explosions amid fighting with Russian forces.

The Russian military has consistently denied targeting residential areas despite abundant evidence of shelling of residential buildings, schools and hospitals.

• Ukraine slows Russian advance under shadow of nuclear threat • Ruble plummets as sanctions bite, sending Russians to banks

In other Ukraine/Russia news

BERLIN — The European Space Agency says the planned launch of a joint mission with Russia to Mars this year is now “very unlikely” due to sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine.

Following a meeting of officials from its 22 member states Monday, the agency said in a statement that it was assessing the consequences of sanctions for its cooperation with Russia’s Roscosmos space agency.

“Regarding the ExoMars program continuation, the sanctions and the wider context make a launch in 2022 very unlikely,” it said.

The launch was already postponed from 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak and technical problems.

The mission’s goal is to put a lander on the red planet to help determine whether there has ever been life on Mars.

On Saturday, Roscosmos said it was pulling its personnel from the European space port in Kourou, French Guiana.

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations General Assembly opened an extraordinary emergency session Monday with pleas for peace in Ukraine, starting a day of frenzied diplomacy at the U.N.

Assembly President Abdulla Shahid asked envoys from the U.N.’s 193 member nations to stand for a moment of silence at the start of the session, the assembly’s first emergency meeting in decades. Shahid repeated calls for an immediate cease-fire, maximum restraint by all parties and “a full return to diplomacy and dialogue.”

Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council was due to meet later Monday to discuss the spiraling humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

With Russian and Ukrainian officials holding talks on the Belarus border, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the assembly he hoped those discussions could lead to a halt in the fighting.

“The guns are talking now, but the path of dialogue must always remain open,” he said. “We need peace now.”

ROME — The Order of Malta has set up an emergency shelter with 250 field beds for displaced persons in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine.

From its Rome-based headquarters, the charitable order also said field kitchens, a common tent and another tent for “psychosocial support” have been erected, and a medical station was set up in that city’s center.

Some 80 volunteers were deployed. In another city in western Ukraine, Lviv, food for 1,000 people is being distributed at the train station, where people in recent days have been crowding platforms in desperate bids to get a place aboard trains headed to Hungary and Poland.

The sovereign Order of Malta is an ancient lay Catholic religious order that runs hospitals and clinics worldwide.

CAIRO — The Arab League has voiced concerns about the war in Ukraine, but it refrained from demanding an end to the Russian invasion.

The pan-Arab organization says in a communique Monday it supports all ongoing efforts to resolve the crisis “through dialogue and diplomacy.”

The communique comes after a meeting of representatives of the 22-member Arab League in Cairo.

The communique didn’t mention Russia, which has close ties with regional powers like Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Most governments in the Arab regions have avoided criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The UAE, which holds a temporary seat at the U.N. Security Council, has joined China and India in abstaining during a vote on a U.S. resolution condemning the invasion.

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Slovakia’s interior Ministry said the country has asked the European Union border agency Frontex to help it guard its border with Ukraine as thousands of Ukrainian refugees flee after the Russian military invasion.

Slovakia’s 98-kilometer (61-mile) border with Ukraine is also the outer border of the EU’s visa-free Schengen zone.

The Slovak government has already agreed to deploy up to 1,500 soldiers to help the border police deal with lrge numbers of refugees. Some 30,000 Ukrainians have crossed the border since Russia attacked Ukraine on Thursday and their numbers are on the rise.

GENEVA — The Swiss president says Russia’s attack on Ukraine is “unacceptable” and Switzerland will adopt European Union sanctions, including asset freezes, targeting Russians — all but depriving well-heeled Russians of access to one of their favorite havens to park their money.

Ignazio Cassis told a news conference Monday that Russia’s invasion was intolerable on moral and political grounds. Switzerland’s government has been trying to balance its condemnation of Russia’s actions with its history of neutrality and as an intermediary between opposing countries.

Referring to the Swiss executive body, he added: “The Federal Council has decided to take up fully the sanctions of the European Union, including the asset freezes.”

Switzerland is not a European Union member but is all but surrounded by four EU countries: Austria, France, Germany and Italy.

LONDON — Russia-born media mogul Evgeny Lebedev has used the pages of a British newspaper he owns to implore Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the invasion of Ukraine.

London’s Evening Standard on Monday features a front-page statement by Lebedev headlined “President Putin, please stop this war,” alongside an Associated Press photo of medics battling to save a 6-year-old girl killed by shelling in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Lebedev wrote: “As a Russian citizen I plead with you to stop Russians killing their Ukrainian brothers and sisters. As a British citizen I ask you to save Europe from war.”

Lebedev, whose oligarch father Alexander Lebedev once worked for the KGB, was made a member of the House of Lords in 2020.

Oligarchs Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Putin, and Mikhail Fridman, who is on a U.S. sanctions list, have also urged an end to the violence.

Meanwhile Roman Abramovich, the billionaire Russian owner of Chelsea Football Club, has offered to help broker peace. A spokesman said Abramovich “was contacted by the Ukrainian side for support in achieving a peaceful resolution, and that he has been trying to help ever since.” It was unclear what help he could provide.

MOSCOW — Russia has closed its airspace to carriers from 36 nations, including European countries and Canada, responding in kind to their move to close their respective airspaces to all Russian aircraft.

The move, announced Monday by the state aviation agency, follows a decision by the EU and Canada over the weekend to close their skies to the Russian planes in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

It added that planes from those countries could only enter Russia’s airspace with special permission.

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