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KYIV — Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed no let-up in his invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, even as the warring sides met for ceasefire talks and Kyiv demanded safe passage for besieged civilians.

After the fall of a first major Ukrainian city to Russian forces, Putin appeared in no mood to heed a global clamour for hostilities to end as the war entered its second week.

"Russia intends to continue the uncompromising fight against militants of nationalist armed groups," Putin said, according to a Kremlin account of a call with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Russian armoured columns from Crimea pushed deep into the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson on the first day of their invasion on Thursday, triggering fighting that left at least 13 civilians dead.

Nine Ukrainian soldiers were also killed, the Kherson regional administration said, as the Russian force seized crossing points from Crimea to the mainland and a crossing over the Dnipro River.

But Ukraine insisted on the need for humanitarian corridors, to get urgent supplies into cities and trapped civilians out, as negotiators met at an undisclosed location on the Belarus-Poland border.

They shook hands across a table at the meeting's start, the Ukrainian delegates in military khaki clothing and the Russians in more formal business suits.

A first round of talks on Monday yielded no breakthrough, and Kyiv says it will not accept any Russian "ultimatums".

Putin, however, said any attempts to slow the talks process would "only lead to additional demands on Kyiv in our negotiating position".

Macron said he feared that "worse is to come" in the conflict and condemned Putin's "lies", according to an aide.

The invasion, now in its eighth day, has created a refugee exodus and turned Russia into a global pariah in the worlds of finance, diplomacy and sports.

The UN has opened a probe into alleged war crimes, as the Russian military bombards cities in Ukraine with shells and missiles, forcing civilians to cower in basements.

"We will restore every house, every street, every city and we say to Russia: learn the word 'reparations'," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video statement.

"You will reimburse us for everything you did against our state, against every Ukrainian, in full," he said.

'Just like Leningrad' 

Zelensky claims thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed since Putin shocked the world by invading Ukraine, purportedly to demilitarise and "de-Nazify" a Western-leaning threat on his borders.

Moscow said Wednesday that it has lost 498 troops, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin praised their sacrifice.

"Their exploits will enter into the history books, their exploits in the struggle against the Nazis," Peskov told reporters.

The Kremlin has been condemned for likening the government of Zelensky, who is Jewish, to that of Germany in World War II.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov kept up the verbal barrage, accusing Western politicians of fixating on "nuclear war" after Putin placed his strategic forces on high alert.

While a long military column appears stalled north of Ukraine's capital Kyiv, Russian troops seized Kherson, a Black Sea city of 290,000 people, after a three-day siege that left it short of food and medicine.

Russian troops are also besieging the port city of Mariupol east of Kherson, which is without water or electricity in the depths of winter.


Ukrainian authorities said residential and other areas in the eastern city of Kharkiv had been "pounded all night" by indiscriminate shelling, which UN prosecutors are investigating as a possible war crime.

Oleg Rubak's wife Katia, 29, was crushed in the rubble of their family home in Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, by a Russian missile strike.

"One minute I saw her going into the bedroom. A minute later there was nothing," Rubak, 32, told AFP amid the ruins in the bitter winter chill.

"I hope she's in heaven and all is perfect for her," he said, adding through tears, "I want the whole world to hear my story."

Junk status 

The war has displaced more than 1 million people, according to the United Nations.

"Protect civilians, for God's sake, in Ukraine; let us do our job", UN emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths told AFP in Geneva.

The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency urged Russia to "cease all actions" at Ukraine's nuclear facilities, including the site of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Putin now finds himself an international outcast, his country the subject of swingeing sanctions that sent the ruble into further freefall on currency markets on Thursday.

Russia's central bank -- whose foreign reserves have been frozen in the West -- imposed a 30-percent tax on all sales of hard currency, following a run on lenders by ordinary Russians.

The unfolding financial costs were underlined as ratings agencies Fitch and Moody's slashed Russia's sovereign debt to "junk" status.

Turmoil deepened on markets more broadly. European stocks slid and oil prices approached $120 per barrel.

Swedish furniture giant Ikea became the latest to halt operations in Russia, as well as Belarus.

Russia's sporting isolation worsened as it lost the right to host Formula One races. The International Paralympic Committee, in a U-turn, banned Russians and Belarusians from the Beijing Winter Games.

The UN General Assembly voted 141-5 to demand that Russia "immediately" withdraw from Ukraine. Only four countries supported Russia, and China abstained.

Europe stepped up practical support as well as diplomatic. The German government is planning to deliver another 2,700 anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine, a source said.

Leaving everything behind 

Many Ukrainians have now fled into nearby countries, according to the UN refugee agency's rapidly rising tally.

"We left everything there as they came and ruined our lives," refugee Svitlana Mostepanenko told AFP in Prague.

Nathalia Lypka, a professor of German from the eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, arrived in Berlin with her 21-year-old daughter.

"My husband and son stayed... My husband already served in the army, and he had to return to duty," she said, before boarding a train for Stuttgart where friends were waiting.

Putin's invasion has appeared hamstrung by poor logistics, tactical blunders and resistance from Ukraine's outgunned military -- as well as its ever-swelling ranks of volunteer fighters.

Russian authorities have imposed a media blackout on what the Kremlin euphemistically calls a "special military operation".

Two liberal media groups -- Ekho Moskvy radio and TV network Dozhd - said they were halting operations, in another death-knell for independent reporting in Putin's Russia.

But Russians have still turned out for large anti-war protests across the country, braving mass arrests in a direct challenge to the president's 20-year rule.

KYIV — Russian forces shelled several Ukrainian cities on Wednesday as troops battled in the streets of Kharkiv and Ukraine's president accused Moscow of wanting to "erase our country".

Russia also said it had captured the Black Sea port of Kherson on the seventh day of Moscow's invasion, while Russian artillery massed outside the capital Kyiv, raising fears of an imminent assault.

Several victims were reported killed by the shelling in southern and eastern Ukraine, adding to a civilian death toll of at least 350 people, including 14 children, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Russia has defied massive economic and diplomatic sanctions and growing global isolation to push on into pro-Western Ukraine, where its forces have encountered stiff resistance.

"There is nowhere in Kharkiv where shells have not yet struck," said Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, after Russian airborne troops landed in the city before dawn.

In Kyiv, mayor Vitali Klitschko said that "the enemy is drawing up forces closer to the capital".

"Kyiv is holding and will hold. We are going to fight", the former champion boxer added.

Possible talks? 

With the international community piling pressure on Russia to halt the conflict, the Kremlin said a Russian delegation would be ready to meet Ukrainian officials at an undisclosed location on Wednesday.

A Ukrainian delegation member, David Arakhamia, said there would be talks but did not specify a place, date or time.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Ukraine would not hear Russian "ultimatums".

Initial talks on Monday between Russia and Ukraine failed to yield any breakthroughs.

Russian troops rolled into Ukraine last week to achieve Putin's mission of overthrowing Zelensky's government and "denazifying" the pro-Western country.

The UN said nearly 875,000 people have fled since the conflict began, including thousands of students and migrant workers from Africa and the Middle East who had been living in Ukraine.

"We left everything there as they came and ruined our lives," said Svitlana Mostepanenko, a refugee registering in Prague.

While Ukrainian forces have held Russian forces back from the country’s main cities, the Russian army said it was now in “full control” of Kherson, a city with a population of 290,000 people.

The claim was not confirmed by Kherson Mayor Igor Nikolayev who appealed on Facebook for permission to transport the dead and wounded out of the city and for food and medicine to be allowed in.

“Without all this, the city will die,” he wrote.

Ukraine’s army also said there was a fierce battle underway in Kharkiv, in northeast Ukraine near the Russian border with a population of 1.4 million.

“There is an ongoing fight between the invaders and the Ukrainians,” the army said on the messaging app Telegram.

Shelling in Kharkiv on Tuesday drew comparisons to the massacres of civilians in Sarajevo in the 1990s and condemnation for what Zelensky called a “war crime”.

The city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea was also reportedly encircled by Russian forces.

In an important strategic victory, Russian troops attacking from the Crimean Peninsula said they had linked up along the Azov Sea coast with pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The separatists have been fighting Ukrainian government forces since 2014 in a conflict that has killed more than 14,000 people.

As the civilian death toll mounts, there is growing opposition to the conflict within Russia, with thousands detained for taking part in anti-war protests.

“I am urging everyone to take to the streets and fight for peace,” jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said in a statement posted on Facebook.

He called on Russians not to be afraid of going to prison.

“Everything has a price and now, in the spring of 2022, we should pay that price.”

‘Russia will be a pariah’ 

Western countries have imposed heavy sanctions on Russia’s economy and there have been international bans and boycotts against Russia in everything from finance to tech, from sports to the arts.

In the latest development, the EU banned broadcasts of Russian state media RT and Sputnik and excluded seven Russian banks from the global SWIFT bank messaging system.

The list did not name two major Russian banks, Sberbank and Gazprombank, which were left connected to SWIFT to allow EU countries to pay for Russian gas and oil deliveries.

EU and NATO members have also sent arms and ammunition to Ukraine, although they have made clear that they will not send troops and the EU has dampened Zelensky’s hopes of membership of the bloc.

In response to the invasion, Western companies have pulled out of projects in Russia, deepening the economic toll on Moscow that saw the ruble collapse this week.

German logistics giant DHL was one of the latest to announce a ban, saying it would stop deliveries to Russia and neighbouring Belarus, which has allowed the passage of Russian troops to attack Ukraine.

“Going forward, Russia will be a pariah, and it’s hard to see how they can restore anything resembling normal interactions in the international system,” said Sarah Kreps, professor at Cornell University.

The invasion has sent global markets into a spiral, with crude surging past $110 a barrel Wednesday and equities sinking.

Aluminium and gas prices hit record highs on supply fears and the Moscow Stock Exchange failed to open for a third day running.

KYIV — Russian forces stepped up attacks on cities across Ukraine on Tuesday and warned they would target security buildings in the capital Kyiv, as the West promised more devastating sanctions and the UN appealed for $1.7 billion for urgent aid.

As Moscow intensified its offensive six days since the invasion began, Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv, said the Russian army had fired on its local administration building with missiles, killing at least 10 people.

An AFP reporter saw rescue workers carrying a body out of the building, which was surrounded by debris and whose windows were completely shattered.

"This is state terrorism on the part of Russia," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who also reiterated his urgent appeal for his pro-Western country to join the European Union.

In a video address to the European Parliament, he said: "Prove you are with us, prove you are not abandoning us and you are really Europeans".

Officials said more than 20 people were also wounded in Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine and 10 more people discovered alive under the rubble.

The International Criminal Court has already opened a war crimes investigation against Russia and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the most recent attack "violates the rules of war".

In southern Ukraine, the city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea was left without electricity after bombardment, while Kherson on the Black Sea reported Russian checkpoints encircling the city.

In a key strategic victory for Moscow, Russia’s defence ministry said its troops had linked up with the forces of pro-Moscow rebels from eastern Ukraine in a region along the Azov Sea coast.

‘Shattered peace in Europe’ 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has “shattered peace in Europe”, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said during a visit to an airbase in neighbouring Poland.

“Russia’s aim is clear, mass panic, civilian victims and the destruction of infrastructure. Ukraine is valiantly fighting back,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, said on Twitter.

Ukraine says more than 350 civilians, including 14 children, have been killed since the Russian invasion began.

New Delhi said an Indian student was among the victims, killed by shelling in Kharkiv on Tuesday.

More than 660,000 people have already fled abroad, the UN refugee agency said, estimating that a million people are displaced within ex-Soviet Ukraine, which has a population of 44 million.

The UN estimates that four million refugees may need help in the coming months and 12 million more will need relief within the country.

Russia has defied international bans, boycotts and sanctions to press ahead with an offensive which it says is aimed at defending Ukraine’s Russian speakers and toppling the leadership.

Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia would continue “until set goals are achieved” after initial ceasefire talks between Moscow and Kyiv failed to secure a breakthrough.

He vowed to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” Ukraine and protect Russia from a “military threat created by Western countries”.

Western powers are planning more sanctions in response.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, hit back saying “don’t forget that in human history, economic wars quite often turned into real ones”.

‘Bombing kept us up all night’ 

Russia on Tuesday urged Kyiv residents living near infrastructure linked to Ukrainian intelligence to evacuate and fears are growing of an all-out assault to capture Kyiv — a city of 2.8 million people.

Satellite images provided by US firm Mazar showed a 65 kilometre city.

Zelensky said defending the city was now “the key priority for the state”.

Inside Kyiv, makeshift barricades dotted the streets and residents formed long queues outside the few shops that remained open to buy basic essentials.

In the village of Shaika near Kyiv, Natasha, 51, opened a canteen in the local church to feed soldiers and volunteers.

“The shelling and the bombing kept us up all night,” she said.

Neighbouring Poland has taken in nearly 400,000 people.

Iryna Plakhuta, a pregnant 43-year-old executive, had to leave her family behind in the capital because of fears over her safety.

“Our husbands stayed in Kyiv,” she said. “They are protecting Ukraine. It’s so hard.”

The UN launched an emergency appeal for $1.7 billion (1.5 billion euros) and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen pledged 500 million euros.

“The destiny of Ukraine is at stake, but our own fate also lies in the balance,” she told the European Parliament.

Sanctions hit Russians 

Western nations have moved to increasingly isolate Russia, responding with an intensifying diplomatic, economic, cultural and sporting backlash.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday suggested Russia should be stripped of UN rights council membership, further squeezing the diplomatic noose.

Germany has already promised arms for Ukraine, while the EU also said it would buy and supply arms to Ukraine, the first such move in its history.

And Turkey said it would implement an international treaty to limit ships passing through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits, a move requested by Ukraine to block the transit of Russian warships.

Within Russia, sanctions imposed by the West have begun to bite.

Putin announced emergency measures intended to prop up the Russian ruble, including banning Russians from transferring money abroad, after the currency crashed to a record low.

Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said Moscow was also preparing a presidential decree to prevent foreign investment exiting the country.

Many ordinary Russians raced to withdraw cash.

Retired soldier Edward Sysoyev, 51, fidgeted impatiently while in line at a bank in Moscow.

“It’ll be ordinary people who pay for this military bun-fight,” he said.

Russian conductor sacked 

The response from the world of sports also gathered steam, as Russia was expelled from the World Cup and the country’s clubs and national teams were suspended from all international football competitions.

The International Olympic Committee on Monday urged sports federations and organisers to exclude Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials from international events.

And Russia was stripped of hosting the 2022 Volleyball World Championships, while YouTube said it was blocking Russian channels RT and Sputnik in Europe and shipping giant Maersk said it would stop deliveries to Russian ports.

In the arts, the Munich Philharmonic said it was parting ways with star Russian conductor Valery Gergiev “with immediate effect” after he failed to respond to a request to denounce the invasion.

BRISBANE, Australia — Tens of thousands of Australians were ordered to flee their homes on Monday, as torrential rain sent floodwaters to record levels, leaving residents stranded on the rooftops of their homes.

Eight people have died, and the country’s weather bureau has warned further severe thunderstorms and intense rainfall will cause “life-threatening flash flooding” across a swathe of the central Pacific coastal region.

In the country town of Lismore, resident Danika Hardiman woke on Monday morning to find mud-brown floodwaters had reached the balcony of her second-floor apartment.

She and her partner managed to climb up to the roof, where they were spotted by passing kayakers, who flagged down a makeshift rescue boat.

“We were rescued by two guys in a boat, two locals,” Hardiman told AFP, describing the scenes in Lismore as “horrific”.

“Imagine you’re in a boat sailing past people’s roofs,” she said.

“The scary thing is this is just the beginning, there’s lots of rain to come.”

With the town’s levees already breached, 43,000 residents were ordered to leave by this morning.

Emergency services were overwhelmed by calls for aid, leading some locals — including Lismore’s Mayor Steve Krieg — to turn to social media for help.

“If anyone has a boat and can get to Engine Street, there’s a pregnant lady sitting on her roof. HELP Please,” he posted on Facebook on Monday.

Emergency rescue services said they had also deployed a helicopter to pluck other stranded residents from rooftops.

More than 400 millimetres of rain has fallen in the past 24 hours around Lismore, with the town’s Wilson River still rising, according to the weather bureau.

Water levels in Lismore have not yet reached their expected peak of 14 metres — but they are already the worst floods the town has experienced.

A miraculous rescue 

Flooding across eastern Australia has now killed eight people, after a man in his 50s died on Monday when his car was swept away by floodwaters in the northern state of Queensland.

Millions of people have been told to stay home and nearly 1,000 schools in Queensland remain closed because of the floods.

A 70-year-old man miraculously survived after his houseboat, swept along by the raging Brisbane River, collided with a ferry terminal and quickly sank.

Members of the public were able to rescue the man, with one telling public broadcaster ABC they had linked arms to create a human chain and fish the man from the river unharmed.

“I don’t know how he survived it, to be honest,” onlooker Matthew Toomey said.

Rain has battered eastern Australia for the better part of a week as an extreme weather system — the tail end of a wet summer fuelled by La Nina — has moved south down the country’s coast, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said on Monday that some regions of her tropical state had experienced a year’s worth of rainfall in just days.

Australia has been on the sharp end of climate change, with droughts, deadly bushfires, bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef and floods becoming more common and more intense as global climate patterns change.

HONG KONG — Hong Kong may impose a hard lockdown that confines people to their homes, authorities signalled Monday, with the city's zero-COVID strategy in tatters and bodies piling up in hospitals.

Two years of strict zero-COVID policies kept the coronavirus largely bay but a breakthrough of the highly transmissible Omicron variant exposed how little authorities had done to prepare for a mass outbreak.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam previously ruled out a citywide lockdown and instead has ordered all 7.4 million residents to be tested in March.

But in a U-turn, health secretary Sophia Chan confirmed on Monday that it was still an option.

Asked by a presenter at Commercial Radio whether a lockdown was still ruled out she replied: "No. We are still discussing."

"From a public health perspective, to bring out the best effect of compulsory universal testing, we need to reduce people's movements to some extent," she added.

Chan's comments came a day after Li Dachuan, a senior mainland Chinese official involved in a joint taskforce on the virus with Hong Kong authorities, described a lockdown as "the most ideal and best approach to achieve the best effect of universal tests".

The revelation adds fresh uncertainty and anxiety for residents and businesses in a city gripped by the kind of chaos that was more familiar at the start of the pandemic.

Hong Kong has now recorded 193,000 cases and 636 deaths in the current wave since December 31.

That compares to just 12,000 infections and 205 deaths for the whole of the rest of the pandemic.

Hospitals have been stretched to breaking point for weeks and on Sunday officials revealed bodies were piling up at hospitals because mortuaries are full.

"At this moment, we face a problem of transportation of dead bodies from hospital to public mortuary," Hospital Authority chief manager Lau Ka-hin told reporters.

"That's why there are some bodies who were initially planned to be transported to a public mortuary, but stayed in hospital."

Hong Kong's seven-day average death rate is currently running at around eight per one million people.

That compares with five per million for the United States, 1.80 for Britain and 1.36 for Singapore which, like Hong Kong, initially opted for zero-COVID but shifted more recently to a mitigation strategy and reopening to the wider world.

Officials have revealed that 91 per cent of those who have died in the current wave were not fully vaccinated.

The vast majority of the dead, 92 per cent, are people aged 60 or above with the median age 84 years old as the virus rips through care homes in the densely populated city.

Despite ample supplies Hong Kong had a dismal vaccination rate among over-70s before Omicron struck.

China is now increasingly calling the shots on Hong Kong’s response with the joint taskforce operating out of the neighbouring city of Shenzhen.

Mainland crews are working on constructing temporary hospitals and isolation wards for the infected, although the current caseload far outstrips supply.

Among those advising the government is Liang Wannian, a senior mainland official who was greeted by Lam as he arrived in Hong Kong on Monday.

Liang was a key architect of the successful two-month lockdown in Wuhan where the coronavirus first emerged, a strategy China has continued to deploy in other cities as soon as cases are detected.

Wuhan’s official toll was 53,000 cases and it took two months to suppress with a full lockdown.

Hong Kong has recorded that many cases in just two days and is also battling a much more infectious variant.