Two powerful explosions rocked the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv before dawn on Tuesday. Emergency services said two people died when an apartment building in Kyiv was attacked.
An adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymr Zelenskiy, said on Tuesday that the war in Ukraine was at a crossroads that could lead either to an agreement at talks with Russia or a new Russian offensive.
Russia’s defence ministry spokesperson, Igor Konashenkov, said on Tuesday that Russian forces had taken full control of all territory in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, Russian news agencies reported.
An adviser in the Ukraine government says the the war should be over by May because Russia will run out of resources to keep the invasion going.
The leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia are travelling on Tuesday to Kyiv on a European Union mission to show support for Ukraine as Russia’s invasion intensifies.
The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) says Russia has reportedly installed its own mayor in the city of Melitopol following the alleged abduction of his predecessor on Friday.
Nearly all of the Russian military offensives in Ukraine remain stalled after making little progress over the weekend, according to a Pentagon briefing. Russian troops are still about 15km (9 miles) from the centre of Kyiv, a US defence official said, according to a Reuters report.
Zelenskiy has used his latest address to urge Russian troops to choose surrender over the “shame” of continuing with the war. Speaking partly in Russian, he said the war had become a “nightmare” for Russia and that it had now lost more soldiers in Ukraine than during both Chechen wars combined.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday that the actions of a woman who interrupted a live news bulletin on Russia’s state TV Channel One on Monday to denounce the war in Ukraine amounted to “hooliganism”.
The US president, Joe Biden, is considering travelling to Europe for in-person meetings with Nato allies, Reuters reports. Biden could meet other leaders in Brussels on 23 March and then travel to Poland, the report said.
UK ministers have imposed a series of new export bans and tariffs on Russian products, the morning after the passage of the economic crime bill, intended to make it swifter and easier to target oligarchs and Russian interests.
Ukraine will make a fresh attempt to deliver supplies to civilians trapped in the encircled city of Mariupol on Tuesday, then deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said.
Turkey’s foreign minister said he expected to evacuate citizens from Ukraine’s southern port city of Mariupol on Tuesday or Wednesday, he told reporters after a phone call with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
The EU has this morning formally agreed to a fourth package of sanctions, including an asset freeze and travel ban on Roman Abramovich. The full details are expected to be published in the Official Journal of the European Union later today.
Abramovich, the Chelsea FC owner, is described as a “Russian oligarch who has long and close ties to Vladimir Putin”, in a copy of the EU’s legal text relating to its latest sanctions package.
Boris Johnson has urged the west to end its “addiction” to Russian fuel as he heads for Saudi Arabia in a push for increased oil output.
Almost 89,000 people have offered homes to Ukrainian refugees in the first hours of a government scheme that allows families and individuals to bring them to the UK.
Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder met Abramovich in Moscow for several hours last Thursday, tabloid Bild reports on Tuesday. The purpose of the Gazprom lobbyist’s one-man diplomatic mission, and upon whose request it took place, remains unclear.
