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KYIV — A month since Russia launched its shock invasion, Ukraine's leader on Thursday demanded NATO "save" his shattered country with all-out military aid to let its armed forces turn their dogged defence into attack.

After relentless Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities, the vast scale of civilian suffering was made stark as the UN said more than half of all Ukraine's children have been driven from their homes.

In a video speech, President Volodymyr Zelensky told NATO leaders that Russia had unleashed phosphorus bombs on Ukraine along with indiscriminate shelling of civilians.

"A month of heroic resistance. A month of the darkest suffering," he told the leaders including US President Joe Biden, at the first of three Brussels summits that were tightening the sanctions screws on Russia.

"To save people and our cities, Ukraine needs military assistance without restrictions," Zelensky said. "In the same way that Russia is using its full arsenal without restrictions against us."

Long-range Russian strikes on the eastern city of Kharkiv killed at least six civilians and wounded more than a dozen, Ukrainian authorities said.

At least four people including two children were killed in strikes elsewhere in the east, Lugansk Governor Sergiy Gayday said, accusing Russian forces of using phosphorus bombs in the village of Rubizhne.

Britain's ITV network showed footage of the incendiary weapons -- which cause horrific burns -- dropping in a white haze overnight on the commuter town of Irpin near Kyiv.

"[Russian President] Vladimir Putin has already crossed the red line into barbarism," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in Brussels.

'Big mistake' 

Zelensky wants NATO to help Ukraine go on the offensive with more advanced fighter jets, missile defence systems, tanks, armoured vehicles and anti-ship missiles.

Ahead of the summits of NATO, the G-7 and the European Union, he said: "At these three summits we will see: Who is a friend, who is a partner, and who betrayed us for money."

NATO members have maintained a steady stream of weapons including anti-tank rockets to Ukraine's armed forces, which have helped to stall Russia's advance. But these are seen as essentially defensive.

The United States said the allies could add anti-ship missiles to Ukraine's arsenal. It announced an extra $1 billion in humanitarian aid, and offered to take in up to 100,000 refugees.

Ukraine's navy said it had struck a Russian naval transport vessel docked in the Azov Sea near Mariupol.

Amateur footage showed plumes of black smoke billowing from a large grey vessel docked next to cranes, after what the Ukraine navy said was the strike, which AFP could not independently confirm.

Putin had made a "big mistake", NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said.

"He has underestimated the strength of the Ukrainian people, the bravery of the Ukrainian people and their armed forces."

'Grim milestone' 

Zelensky's appeal came one month to the day after Russian armoured vehicles rolled over the border, igniting a conflict that is feared to have killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians, along with thousands more soldiers on both sides.

More than 10 million Ukrainians have fled their homes, as cities have faced sustained Russian bombardment from land, sea and air.

The month of war has displaced 4.3 million children -- more than half of Ukraine's estimated child population of 7.5 million, according to the UN children's agency Unicef.

"This is a grim milestone that could have lasting consequences for generations to come," UNICEF chief Catherine Russell said.

UN figures show that nearly 3.7 million Ukrainians including 1.8 million children have fled abroad, and more are now displaced inside Ukraine after harrowing journeys out of cities like Mariupol.

In the besieged southern port, Zelensky says nearly 100,000 people are trapped without food, water or power and enduring fierce shelling by Russian forces.

Ukraine's foreign ministry tweeted that Moscow had "launched a new phase of terror against Mariupol" by forcibly deporting about 6,000 residents to Russian camps.

In Zhytomyr, a garrison town west of Kyiv, a Russian strike flattened the school where Vasiliy Kravchuk's six-year-old son was meant to start at next year.

"It's hard, it's very hard," sobbed the 37-year-old, who works for a tourism organisation which is now bereft of tourists.

"Every day it's 20, 30 times we go to the basement [to shelter]. It's difficult because my wife is pregnant, I have a little son," says Kravchuk, wearing a bright pink hoodie and rubbing his eyes.

Experts say Russia's once-vaunted military has been bogged down by dogged resistance, logistical problems and low morale, and has turned to long-range bombardment in the hope of breaking Ukrainian resolve.

Heavy exchanges of shelling could be heard from Irpin, and plumes of black smoke rose into the air, an AFP team at the scene said.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Wednesday that "almost all of Irpin is already under the control of Ukrainian soldiers" after battles with Russian troops.

"The houses are destroyed, there are only basements left," businessman Leonid Markevych, 55, told AFP after fleeing from his house just outside Irpin.

Tarnishing Russian gold 

Coinciding with the back-to-back Brussels summits, the United States and Britain announced further sanctions against Russian individuals and entities.

But while the Moscow Stock Exchange partially reopened for the first time since the invasion, the G-7 summit in Brussels vowed new action to destabilise Russia's tottering economy.

The group of advanced economies and the EU pledged to block transactions involving the Russian central bank's gold reserves, to hamper any Moscow bid to circumvent Western sanctions, the White House said.

"The more we do that now, the more pressure we apply now, particularly on things like gold... I believe the more we can shorten the war, shorten the slaughter in Ukraine," Britain's Johnson said.

Ordinary Russians have been feeling the pinch from shortages of goods and the sudden disappearance of Western brands.

But Putin's regime has introduced draconian censorship laws to prevent independently verified news about what it calls a "special military operation".

What is clear is that Ukrainian civilians continue to bear the brunt of the war.

"There's going to have to be a further, massive scaling up of assistance within Ukraine in the coming weeks," said Michael Ryan, emergencies director for the World Health Organisation.

"I have never, myself, seen such complex needs, and so quickly in a crisis that has developed so fast," he said.


SEOUL — North Korea fired what could be its largest-ever intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday, Tokyo and Seoul said, a dramatic return to long-range testing that sparked outrage from neighbours and the United States.

South Korea's military fired a missile barrage into the Sea of Japan in response to the ICBM launch, the first full-range test of Kim Jong Un's most powerful missiles since 2017.

Pyongyang has conducted an unprecedented blitz of nearly a dozen sanctions-busting tests this year. But long-range and nuclear tests have been paused since Kim met then US president Donald Trump for a bout of doomed diplomacy, which collapsed in 2019.

Thursday's launch was a "breach of the suspension of intercontinental ballistic missile launches promised by Chairman Kim Jong -un," South Korea's President Moon Jae-in said in a statement.

"It poses a serious threat to the Korean Peninsula, the region and the international community," he said, adding that it was a "clear violation" of UN Security Council resolutions.

The United States also strongly condemned the launch as a violation of Security Council regulations that "needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region".

"This action demonstrates that the DPRK continues to prioritize its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs over the well-being of its people," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement, referring to North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The missile was fired on Thursday afternoon from Sunan -- likely the same site as a failed test last week -- and had a range of 6,200 kilometres, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Japanese authorities said it appeared to be a "new type" of ICBM that flew for 71 minutes and landed in Japan's territorial waters.

"This is such an outrageous, unforgivable act," Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in Brussels where he was due to meet with members of the Group of Seven.

North Korea was threatening "the peace and safety of Japan, the region and the international community," he added.

"This cannot be accepted."

In a phone call late Thursday, Japan's foreign secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken "strongly condemned" the launch, according to a statement from Tokyo's foreign ministry.

Hwasong-17 

The North has carried out three ICBM tests, the last in November 2017, of a Hwasong-15 -- deemed powerful enough to reach the continental United States.

It has long coveted an ICBM that can carry multiple warheads and, Seoul and Washington say, has been testing the Hwasong-17, a giant ICBM first unveiled in October 2020.

Despite biting international sanctions over its weapons programmes, Pyongyang has doubled down on Kim's drive to modernise the military, while ignoring US offers of talks.

From hypersonic to medium-range ballistic missiles, Pyongyang has tested a raft of banned weaponry in 2022, including two recent launches it claimed were of a "reconnaissance satellite".

The United States and South Korea said this month these tests were actually of components of the Hwasong-17 -- and warned Pyongyang was preparing to test-fire an ICBM at full range.

A launch last week, likely of the Hwasong-17, ended in failure, with the missile exploding mid-air in the skies above the capital.

"Pyongyang attempted to fire an ICBM at the Sunan airport last week but failed," said Go Myong-hyun, senior researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

"So it carried out today's launch to make up for that failure and because it has to complete the ICBM technology right away," he told AFP.

Seoul 'disorganised' 

North Korea will mark the 110th anniversary of the birth of founder Kim Il -sung on April 15, and analysts predict Pyongyang will conduct an ICBM or satellite launch as part of the celebrations.

"Kim Jong -un feels it's very important to prove his leadership's competency before the 110th birthday anniversary of Kim Il -sung," said Cheong Seong-chang of the Centre for North Korea Studies at the Sejong Institute.

North Korea is also taking advantage of Washington's deteriorating relationships with China and Russia, following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

"Kim probably feels this is the perfect time to develop ICBMs while repeatedly reminding the world that the North, unlike Ukraine, is a nuclear-armed country," Ahn Chan-il, a scholar of North Korean studies, told AFP.

South Korea is also going through a presidential transition, with Moon set to hand power to successor Yoon Suk-yeol in May, which creates foreign policy confusion, Hong Min, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told AFP.

"Everything is very disorganised and all over the place," he said.

"For the incoming administration, it is highly likely that they are not yet prepared."


NEW DELHI — When 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a recent border clash with China, the military hardware New Delhi sent to bolster its Himalayan frontier was mostly Russian-origin, showing not for the first time its closeness to "longstanding and time-tested friend" Moscow.

Facing an increasingly assertive China closer to home, these ties help explain Prime Minister Narendra Modi's reluctance to criticise Vladimir Putin -- a regular visitor -- over the Ukraine invasion.

India has abstained on UN resolutions censuring Russia and continues to buy Russian oil and other goods, despite pressure from Western countries.

US President Joe Biden this week called India "somewhat shaky" on Russia.

In the Cold War, officially non-aligned India leaned towards the Soviet Union -- in part due to US support for arch-rival Pakistan -- buying its first Russian MiG-21 fighter jets in 1962.

These military ties were cemented by two watershed events: India's humiliating defeat to China in a 1962 border war and the war with Pakistan in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh.

During the latter, the USSR sent ships to the Indian Ocean to deter a direct US intervention to help Pakistan. Shortly before the two had signed the landmark Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation.

And following skirmish with China in 2020, Indian reinforcements to shore up its Himalayan border included Russian tanks and aircraft.

Russia "always remained immune to external pressure and supplied us when we needed it, and have not slipped," Nandan Unnikrishnan of the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation told AFP.

"The Ukraine war doesn't change our neighbourhood situation, so why should we even consider replacing our long-tested and trusted supplier without any practical replacement?" he said.

Air, land and sea 

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, 70-85 per cent of the Indian military's hardware was Russian, and in recent years India has sourced more from elsewhere -- notably France, the US and Israel -- and made more itself.

But according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, not only does Russia remain India's biggest supplier of major arms but New Delhi is also Moscow's largest customer in this field.

From 2017-21, India was the world's largest importer of major arms, and 46 per cent of them were Russian. Some 28 per cent of Russia's arms exports went to India, and account for the lion's share of the two countries' overall trade.

Almost all of India's estimated 3,500 battle tanks are Russian-made or designed -- built in India on licence -- while the bulk of its combat aircraft are Sukhois and MiGs.

India's sole operational aircraft carrier is the refurbished Soviet-era Admiral Gorshkov, four of its 10 destroyers are Russian-origin, as are eight of its 14 non-nuclear-powered submarines.

India also has large Russian orders pending including a $5-billion deal for S-400 air defence systems -- the first deliveries began last year -- four frigates and one nuclear-powered submarine.

"With that kind of a dependency it is very difficult for India to take any other stand on Russia," Manoj Joshi, an author and former member of a government task force for reforms in national security told AFP.

But he said that the dependency doesn't end with buying equipment. For sometimes decades afterwards, it needs upgrades, maintenance, spares and other support from Russia.

India and Russia are also cooperating in defence, for example in making BrahMos cruise missiles, one of which India accidentally fired at Pakistan this month.

Russian kit is also relatively cheap, and Western countries are much more reluctant than Moscow to transfer technology to allow arms to be made in India, experts say.

"The US sells everything with an end-user condition and still won't sell us a certain class of weapons -- unlike Russia," said Joshi.

GENEVA — The United Nations said on Wednesday it wanted the whole world covered by weather disaster early warning systems within five years to protect people from the worsening impacts of climate change.

A third of the world’s people, mainly in the least-developed countries and developing small island states, are without early warning coverage, the UN said, with 60 per cent of people in Africa wide open to weather catastrophes.

The plan will cost $1.5 billion, but the UN insisted it would be money well spent compared to the devastation wrought by meteorological disasters.

“The United Nations will spearhead new action to ensure every person on Earth is protected by early warning systems within five years,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres announced, launching the plan on World Meteorological Day.

Proper early warning systems, for floods, droughts, heatwaves or storms, allow people to know that hazardous weather is coming, and set out plans for what governments and individuals should do to minimise the impacts.

“Each increment of global heating will further increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events,” said Guterres.

“Early warning systems save lives. Let us ensure they are working for everyone.”

Return on investment 

The UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) will present an action plan at the next UN climate conference, to be held in Egypt in November.

WMO chief Petteri Taalas said the $1.5 billion required to build weather, water and climate early warning services would provide one of the highest rates of return on investments in climate adaptation.

The organisation believes the investment would save countless lives, protect the most vulnerable and make good economic sense.

The WMO said the number of weather disasters it recorded went up fivefold from 1970 to 2019, due to climate change and an increased number of extreme weather events, but also improved monitoring.

“Thanks to better warnings, the number of lives lost decreased almost three-fold over the same period,” the organisation said.

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, struck at the COP21 summit, called for capping global warming at well below two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level, and ideally closer to 1.5ºC.

Guterres said it was vital to limit global temperature rises to 1.5ºC as the hotter the planet gets, the greater the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

“Keeping 1.5 alive requires a 45 per cent reduction in global emissions by 2030 to reach carbon neutrality by mid-century,” he said.

However, carbon emissions are set to rise by almost 14 per cent this decade.

It is also feared that as countries turn away from Russian oil and gas following the Kremlin-ordered war in Ukraine, short-term alternatives will end up becoming new, long-term deals that lock in fossil fuel dependency, putting the final nail in the coffin for the 1.5ºC target.

Africa gap 

One problem stemming from the lack of advanced weather monitoring systems in Africa is that climate projections are built from sparse information.

While west African countries have the best early warning coverage on the continent and particular nations like Kenya and Morocco have reasonable services, central Africa is poorly covered.

Mohamed Adow, founder of the Nairobi-based climate action think-tank Power Shift Africa, told AFP that this was leading to blind choices in preparing for more extreme weather events.

“How do you create early warning systems for extreme weather without the data?” he said.

“Let’s say you build a metre-high seawall due to sea levels rise. But what if the risk of sea level rise in your region is going to be higher?”

KYIV — Ukraine appealed for more Western military help ahead of a NATO summit, as it warned that almost 100,000 people are trapped by Russian bombardment and facing starvation in the ruins of the besieged port of Mariupol.

Tens of thousands of residents have already fled the southern city, bringing harrowing testimony of a "freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings", according to Human Rights Watch.

As the UN demanded Russia end its "unwinnable" war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Japanese parliament that the UN Security Council was dysfunctional and in need of reform, after Russia wielded its veto to nix condemnation of its invasion.

Nearly a month on, peace talks have agreed on daily humanitarian corridors for refugees, and Ukraine says it is willing to countenance some Russian demands subject to a national referendum.

But it has refused to bow to Russian pressure to disarm and renounce all Western alliances, and Zelensky was also due Thursday to address a NATO meeting in Brussels joined by US President Joe Biden.

Ukraine's lead negotiator Mykhaylo Podolyak said the peace talks were encountering "significant difficulties", after Moscow accused the United States of undermining the process.

Russia meanwhile refuses to rule out using nuclear weapons if it faces an "existential threat", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby slammed Moscow's "dangerous" rhetoric, and Biden warned en route to Europe that Russia may also use chemical weapons in Ukraine as its ground offensive stalls.

"Our armed forces and citizens are holding out with superhuman courage," Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Zelensky, said as Biden travelled to the summits of NATO, the G-7 and European Union in Brussels.

"But we cannot win a war without offensive weapons, without medium-range missiles that can be a means of deterrence," Yermak said.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the leaders at Thursday’s summit would agree to “major increases of forces” including four new battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.

The allies will also offer “additional support” to Ukraine against nuclear and chemical threats, he said.

Charred landscape 

For Ukrainians besieged in Mariupol and other cities, Russian talk of peace rings hollow as they come under indiscriminate shelling that Western countries say amounts to a war crime.

In a video address, Zelensky said more than 7,000 people had escaped Mariupol in the last 24 hours, but one group travelling along an agreed humanitarian route west of the city was “simply captured by the occupiers”.

Satellite images of Mariupol released by private company Maxar showed a charred landscape, with several buildings ablaze and smoke billowing from the city.

Ukrainian forces also reported “heavy” ground fighting, with Russian “infantry storming the city” after they rejected a Monday ultimatum to surrender.

UN relief agencies estimate there have been around 20,000 civilian casualties in Mariupol, and perhaps 3,000 killed, but they stress the actual figure remains unknown.

“Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house,” United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said.

“This war is unwinnable. Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. That is inevitable.”

Mariupol is a pivotal target in President Vladimir Putin’s war — providing a land bridge between Russian forces in Crimea to the southwest and Russian-controlled territory to the north and east.

Putin threatens ‘Russia’s future’ 

“Putin’s offensive is stuck despite all the destruction that it is bringing day after day,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a speech to the Bundestag, warning of further Western sanctions against Russia.

Putin “must hear the truth” that not only is the war destroying Ukraine, “but also Russia’s future”, he said.

After Brussels, Biden will head on to Poland, which has received the bulk of more than 3.6 million Ukrainians fleeing the war.

The president will consult with allies on new sanctions and on potentially throwing Russia out of the G-20, US officials said.

“We believe that it cannot be business as usual for Russia in international institutions and in the international community,” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters.

China, a leading member of the G-20, pushed back against expelling Russia from the group of major economies, and Moscow said Putin still intended to join its November summit in Indonesia.

On the ground, Russia’s defence ministry has reported some advances in the southeast of Ukraine and boasted of strikes using next-generation weaponry against “military infrastructure” across the country.

But Ukraine and its allies have claimed Russian forces are severely depleted, poorly supplied and still unable to carry out complex operations.

For the first time, there are signs that Ukrainian forces are going on the offensive, retaking a town near Kyiv and attacking Russian forces in the south of the country.

‘Morale is high’ 

In the southern city of Mykolaiv, one bulwark of the fightback, residents said they were determined to stay despite incessant bombardment.

At the burial of soldier Igor Dundukov, 46, his brother Sergei wept as he kissed his sibling’s swollen, blood-stained face.

“We supported his commitment to defending our homeland,” Sergei told AFP. “This is our land. We live here. Where would we run to? We grew up here.”

In the capital Kyiv, a 35-hour curfew ended early on Wednesday after Russian strikes laid waste to the Retroville shopping complex, killing at least eight people.

Russia claimed the mall was being used to store rocket systems and ammunition.

Maxim Kostetskyi, 29, a lawyer, said residents had used the curfew to regroup.

“We don’t know if the Russians will continue with their efforts to encircle the city, but we are much more confident, the morale is high and inspiring,” he told AFP.

SHANGHAI — Shanghai authorities on Wednesday called for calm as worried citizens swamped online grocery platforms to stock up on food over fears of impending lockdowns in a city struggling to halt a COVID spike.

China is experiencing its worst COVID-19 outbreak since the start of the pandemic more than two years ago, with Shanghai posting record-high case counts as the highly transmissible Omicron variant frustrates authorities.

China's biggest city on Wednesday reported 981 cases, all but four of them asymptomatic , a number that dwarfs any previous daily tally in the city and which is nearly one-fifth of the day's national total.

Shanghai has responded to the outbreak with targeted residential lockdowns in areas with confirmed cases or close contacts rather than a city-wide lockdown, aiming to minimise disruption.

But as case counts rise, so has public anxiety, with residents taking to social media to express fears of further lockdowns across the city of roughly 25 million people.

Citizens have complained of unclear government messaging and voiced anxiety over images of expanding test sites and the announcement this week that some indoor arenas had been converted into mass-quarantine sites.

"We hope that everyone will not believe or spread rumours, and especially do not maliciously spread rumours that cause panic in society," Wu Jinglei, head of Shanghai's health commission said at a daily briefing.

Those spreading rumours would "bear legal responsibility", he added.

"Everyone is working hard to keep the city safe."

Stores have bustled as consumers stock up, and social media images circulated late Tuesday showed crowds of shoppers converging on outdoor vegetable markets. The images could not be independently verified.

'Demand has surged' 

Online shoppers on Wednesday posted complaints that platforms were crashing under the strain or that some goods were unavailable.

"Everyone who used to buy offline is now buying online, so demand has indeed surged," said Chen Ying, spokeswoman for online grocery platform Dingdong Maicai.

"We now face some limits in terms of merchandise and manpower."

The coronavirus first emerged in the city of Wuhan in late 2019 but China has largely kept it under control through its tough zero-COVID strategy.

Authorities had recently suggested a lighter approach to minimise public and economic disruptions.

But Omicron is straining those plans, particularly as Beijing nervously watches a deadly Hong Kong Omicron surge that sparked panic buying and has claimed a high toll in the unvaccinated elderly.

Mainland health officials last week revealed that only around half of Chinese aged over 80 have been double-vaccinated.

Shanghai shut schools for nearly two weeks but has avoided the sort of citywide lockdown implemented in some north-eastern cities hit by the current outbreak.

Still, its normally bustling streets are muted, with cars largely replaced by the zipping scooters of grocery and food-delivery riders and many restaurants closed or offering take-out only.

Citizens live daily with the risk of suddenly being confined at home for anything from two to 14 days and long lines for nucleic acid tests form daily at hospitals.

Chinese media reported that some financial traders in Shanghai and Shenzhen had been staying overnight in their offices to avoid being sequestered at home.

KYIV — Two "super powerful bombs" rocked Mariupol on Tuesday as Ukrainian authorities made a fresh attempt at rescuing civilians from the besieged port city which has suffered relentless shelling since Russia's invasion began almost a month ago.

More than 200,000 people are trapped in the strategic city described by those who managed to escape as a "freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings", Human Rights Watch said, quoting figures provided by a local official.

"We know that there will not be enough space for everyone" on Tuesday, but "we will try to carry out the evacuation until we have gotten all the inhabitants of Mariupol out," vowed Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk in a video address.

Two "super powerful bombs" slammed into the city even as rescue efforts were ongoing, said Mariupol local authorities, without giving an immediate toll.

"It is clear that the occupiers are not interested in the city of Mariupol, they want to raze it to the ground, to reduce it to ashes," the authorities said.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky turned to Pope Francis for help, urging the pontiff to mediate in the conflict and to help end "human suffering".

Earlier, Zelensky said all issues would be on the table if Russia's Vladimir Putin agreed to direct talks to end the war, including the contested eastern regions Donbas and the annexed Crimea Peninsula.

But he warned his country would be "destroyed" before it surrenders.

The Kremlin in return said it would like to see negotiations with Kyiv to be "more active and substantial".

Increasingly 'brutal' 

Russia's position was "well-known to the Ukrainian side" because Moscow handed over its demands in written form "many days ago", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding, "we would like a more substantial and swift answer".

The two sides are currently holding negotiations remotely after several rounds of talks between delegations meeting on the border between Belarus and Ukraine, but little progress has been made.

With Russia’s military campaign appearing to stall, fears are growing that Putin may resort to even more drastic means to turn the tide.

US President Joe Biden warned that Putin was considering using chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine, as he described Moscow’s tactics as increasingly “brutal”.

Biden is due to travel to Brussels on Thursday for a series of summits gathering NATO, EU and G-7 leaders, before heading to Poland, which has received the bulk of more than 3.5 million Ukrainians fleeing war in their country.

‘Desperate bid’ 

Since Russia launched its invasion on February 24, at least 117 children have been killed in the war, Ukraine’s federal prosecutor said.

Some 548 schools have been damaged, including 72 completely destroyed.

Russia has pushed on with its assaults, in the face of unprecedented Western sanctions that has led international companies to pull out of the country and left its key banks shut out of the SWIFT messaging system.

But both Western and Ukrainian experts believe the war was not going the way the Kremlin had planned.

The invading forces were running out of supplies, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told CNN, describing them as “frustrated” and “stalled”.

The assessment was corroborated by Ukraine’s army command which said Russian troops now had ammunition, food and fuel to last just three days.

Three hundred Russian soldiers have defected in the north-eastern Sumy region, added the army command on Facebook.

Even in areas Russia has captured, resistance has persisted.

Ukrainians “are going after Russians and pushing them out of places where the Russians have been in the past”, Kirby said, pointing to Mykolaiv, in the south.

“We have seen this now increase over the last few days.”

In the occupied southern city of Kherson, Ukraine’s leaders on Tuesday accused Russian troops of firing on unarmed protesters.

A series of videos posted on social media and the messaging app Telegram showed citizens gathering in Kherson’s “Freedom Square” protesting against Russia’s recent seizure of the city.

Russian soldiers could be seen firing into the air.

An elderly person was wounded, said Ukraine’s foreign ministry in a statement.

“The humanitarian situation is rapidly deteriorating,” it said, accusing Moscow of refusing to allow for an aid corridor to evacuate civilians and channel in food.

Pivotal target 

More critical was the plight of residents from Mariupol, who have been without electricity and water for days.

Several bids to evacuate the population had been made but they have rapidly collapsed with both sides trading blame over violations.

Getting civilians out was the priority on Tuesday, said Ukrainian officials. Three routes have been drawn up linking the port city to Zaporizhzhia, Deputy Prime Minister Vereshschuk said.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell had described as a “massive war crime” the siege of Mariupol, which had killed more than 2,000 people.

Russia had given Mariupol until Monday morning to surrender, but Kyiv rejected the ultimatum and said the city’s resistance was bolstering the defence of all of Ukraine.

Mariupol is a pivotal target in Putin’s war — providing a land bridge between Russian forces in Crimea to the southwest and Russian-controlled territory to the north and east.

Meanwhile in Kyiv, a 35-hour curfew came into effect from 8:00pm (18:00 GMT) Monday, after Russian strikes laid waste to the “Retroville” shopping complex, killing at least eight people.

Russia claimed the mall was being used to store rocket systems and ammunition.

Maxim Kostetskyi, 29, a lawyer, said residents in the capital were using the “pause” imposed by the lockdown to regroup.

“We don’t know if the Russians will continue with their efforts to encircle the city, but we are much more confident, the morale is high and inspiring,” he told AFP.

‘Unwinnable’ 

Making his relentless push on the diplomatic front, Zelensky has renewed a call for direct talks with Putin.

The Ukrainian president said he was even willing to discuss Russian-occupied Crimea and the breakaway Russian regions in Donbas, though he insisted he still believes they must be returned to Ukraine.

“At the first meeting with the president of Russia, I am ready to raise these issues,” he said, adding that any agreement involving “historic” changes would be put to a national referendum.

For UN chief Antonio Guterres, it was high time for Russia to end its “absurd war” in Ukraine.

“Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house,” he said.

“This war is unwinnable. Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. That is inevitable,” he added.