Russia-Ukraine updates: US sanctions Russian military shipbuilder, diamond miner

An American who traveled to Ukraine to assist in the country's stand against the Russian invasion described the heavy bombardment parts of western Ukraine are now seeing.

Glock Dara, 29, was asleep at the military training ground in Yavoric, on the outskirts of Lviv, when he heard the first missiles begin to strike on Sunday morning.

"I didn’t have time to panic. I just focused on running as fast as I can," Dara told ABC News. "Hella chaos, bombs falling left and right -- you’re just praying to God it doesn’t happen to you."

The strikes left at least 35 dead and 134 wounded, according to Ukrainian officials. Russian officials claim 180 foreign mercenaries are dead.

Dara is one of roughly two dozen soldiers evacuated from Yavoriv and brought to the Korczowa refugee center in Poland Sunday afternoon, about 15 miles away.

All of the men ABC News spoke with at the refugee center were volunteer foreign fighters from Ireland, France, Boston -- most dressed in uniforms bearing the Ukrainian flag. The base served as a launching pad for foreign fighters who were trained there and then deployed across the country, one medic from Ireland told ABC News.

"A lot" of Americans are at the American base as well, Dara said. He and some of the men he travelled with are now planning to re-group in Krakow, but Dara already intends to back to Lviv, he said.

"I came here as a volunteer counter-terrorist," he added.

The Korczowa refugee center has already seen a significant increase in the number of people coming in from western Ukraine in just the last couple days, volunteers at the shelter told ABC News.

-ABC News' Ines De La Cuerta

Ukraine Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko confirmed Sunday that power lines have been repaired to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine, which was seized by Russian forces during a fierce battle last week.

"Our Ukrainian energy companies, risking their own health and lives, were able to avert the risk of a possible nuclear catastrophe that threatened the whole of Europe," Galushchenko said in a statement.

He said the restoration of electricity to the plant will enable its cooling systems of nuclear waste assemblies to work normally again, not from backup power.

In 1986, reactor No. 4 at the power plant, about 65 miles north of the capital Kyiv, exploded, spewing enormous amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere and causing more than 100,000 people in a 1,000-square-mile radius to evacuate.

Nuclear experts and Ukrainian government officials had expressed concern about potential health hazards from radioactive material spreading from the defunct plant amid the fighting.

British officials are exploring whether they can use the homes of sanctioned Russian oligarchs to house refugees from the war in Ukraine, a top United Kingdom minister told the BBC.

Michael Gove, the British secretary of state for housing, said he wants to explore options for using oligarchs' homes in Great Britain to shelter the millions of refugees fleeing Ukraine "for as long as they are sanctioned."

“There’s quite a high legal bar to cross and we’re not talking about permanent confiscation. But we are saying, ‘You’re sanctioned, you’re supporting Putin, this home is here, you have no right to use or profit from it," Grove said. "If we can use it in order to help others, let’s do that."

At least 31 Russian attacks have been against Ukraine health care facilities, medical staff and ambulances, according to a joint statement Sunday from the World Health Organization, the United Nations and UNICEF.

“Today, we call for an immediate cessation of all attacks on health care in Ukraine. These horrific attacks are killing and causing serious injuries to patients and health workers, destroying vital health infrastructure and forcing thousands to forgo accessing health services despite catastrophic needs," the statement reads.

WHO's surveillance system for the attacks verified that at least 24 health care facilities have been damaged or destroyed. WHO said it has also verified that five ambulances have been destroyed in attacks.

The attacks on health care targets have caused at least 12 deaths and 34 injuries since the Russian invasion began, according to the statement.

Oxygen and other medical supplies, including those used for the management of pregnancy complications, "are running dangerously low," the statement said.

“For example, more than 4,300 births have occurred in Ukraine since the start of the war and 80,000 Ukrainian women are expected to give birth in the next three months," the organizations said.