Kyiv:
As Russian troops advanced closer to the Ukrainian capital from the north, west and northeast, it was feared that Kiev would be completely surrounded, while several airstrikes crashed into a military base near the western city of Lviv on Sunday.
Here are the latest developments in the war between Russia and Ukraine:
Nine dead and 57 injured have been reported after Russian forces carried out eight airstrikes on a military training ground outside Lviv in western Ukraine, in a major escalation near the Polish border, officials said on Sunday.
As Kiev faces possible encirclement, Russian troops fired on a group of evacuated women and children leaving a village near the capital, killing seven, including a child, the Ukrainian army said on Saturday.
Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak says Kiev is already effectively “besieged” as the military and volunteers prepare to defend the city street by street.
Meanwhile, the southern port city of Mariupol is incessantly bombed by Russian troops. The strategic port, in particular, is facing what Ukraine says is a “humanitarian catastrophe”, with more than 1,500 dead. Attempts to evacuate hundreds of thousands of civilians have repeatedly failed.
Recently, a mosque in Mariupol, where 80 civilians were seeking shelter, was shelled by Russian troops, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Saturday. The latest satellite images showed extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and residential buildings throughout Mariupol.
This comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was kidnapped by Russian soldiers who forcibly invaded and occupied the southeastern Ukrainian city.
About 13,000 people were evacuated from a number of Ukrainian cities on Saturday, the deputy prime minister said, almost double the number who managed to escape Friday, as nine of the 14 opened humanitarian corridors were successful.
Intensive diplomacy efforts continued, with leaders of France and Germany, Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, urging Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to end the deadly blockade during a three-way meeting on Saturday.
In a glimmer of hope, Ukraine’s Zelensky said on Saturday that Russia – after being inflexible for days – had taken a “fundamentally different approach” in its latest talks to end the conflict. He said the approach contradicted previous talks where Moscow only “made ultimatums”.
“About 1,300” Ukrainian troops have been killed since the invasion began, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, giving the first death count for the Ukrainian armed forces. Russia said on March 2 it had lost 498 soldiers, but Zelensky said it is closer to 12,000. Nearly 2.6 million people have fled the country, the UN says, more than half to Poland.