Ukraine accused Russia on Wednesday of breaking a ceasefire to prevent the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in the besieged port of Mariupol, where the Red Cross has described conditions as "apocalyptic".
Russia said it would hold fire to let civilians flee besieged cities, but efforts to evacuate Mariupol appeared to have failed again, as have several previous attempts since Saturday.
"Russia continues holding hostage over 4,00,000 people in Mariupol, blocks humanitarian aid and evacuation. Indiscriminate shelling continues," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter. "Almost 3,000 newborn babies lack medicine and food."
Scant progress evacuating Ukrainian civilians
Russia announced a new ceasefire in Ukraine on Wednesday to let civilians flee besieged cities, but there were only limited signs of progress providing escape routes for hundreds of thousands of people trapped without medicine or freshwater.
The governor of Sumy, an eastern city, said civilian cars were leaving for a second day through a safe corridor set up to Poltava further west.
But by midday in Ukraine there was no confirmation that any of the other evacuation corridors had been successfully opened, including a route out of Mariupol, seen as the most urgent, where the Red Cross has described conditions as "apocalyptic".
The Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers will Thursday hold face-to-face talks in southern Turkey in the first high-level contact between Kyiv and Moscow since Russia invaded its neighbour two weeks ago.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has pushed for Turkey to play a mediation role, has expressed hope the talks can avert tragedy and even help agree a ceasefire.
But analysts fear there are only the lowest chances of a breakthrough at the meeting in Antalya between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba.
United Nations investigators on Wednesday urged world leaders to do everything they could to avoid Ukraine becoming another Syria, a country "destroyed" by 11 years of conflict.
Russian forces have been involved in the Syrian civil war since 2015 and the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria said it hoped the disregard for civilian casualties would not be repeated in Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Rather than winding down, the investigators said the war in Syria was heating up again and warned that its participants may take advantage of world attention turning away towards Ukraine.
Britain said Wednesday it was preparing to send more portable missile systems to help Ukrainian forces destroy Russian tanks and aircraft, but denied it was escalating the conflict.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the UK had so far delivered 3,615 Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapons (NLAWs) "and continue(s) to deliver more".
"We will shortly be starting the delivery of a small consignment of anti-tank Javelin missiles as well," he told parliament.
Ukraine’s military high command says members of Russia’s National Guard have detained more than 400 people in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region for protesting against Moscow’s offensive.
“Due to the furious resistance of the residents of Kherson, the occupiers are attempting to introduce an administrative-police regime,” it said in a statement.
Russian forces captured Kherson last week, marking Moscow’s first seizure of a major city since it began its offensive.
The number of refugees fleeing Ukraine increased by more than 140,000 in 24 hours, according to United Nations figures issued Wednesday, with more than 2.15 million now having fled since Russia invaded on February 24.
Power has been entirely cut to the Chernobyl power plant, site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, and its security systems, Ukraine's energy operator Ukrenergo said Wednesday.
The nuclear power plant was fully disconnected from the power grid, it said in a statement on its Facebook page, adding that military operations meant there is no possibility to restore the lines.
Chinese companies that defy US restrictions against exporting to Russia may be cut off from American equipment and software they need to make their products, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told the New York Times.
The US could "essentially shut" down Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp or any Chinese companies defying US sanctions by continuing to supply chips and other advanced technology to Russia, Raimondo said in an interview published on Tuesday.
Moves by US-led NATO have pushed tension between Russia and Ukraine to a "breaking point", Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Wednesday.
At a daily news briefing, he urged the United States to take China's concerns seriously and avoid undermining its rights or interests in handling the Ukraine issue and ties with Russia.
At least 10 people were killed in a Russian military attack in the eastern Ukrainian town of Severodonestk on Tuesday, a local official for the Lugansk region said in a statement on Telegram.
The Russian military "opened fire" on residential homes and other buildings in the town, he said, without immediately specifying whether it was an artillery attack.
The region has seen heavy fighting in recent days.
Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday agreed a day-long ceasefire around a series of evacuation corridors to allow civilians to escape the fighting, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
Vereshchuk said Moscow vowed to respect the truce from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm around six areas that have been heavily hit by fighting, including regions near Kyiv, in Zaporizhzhia in the south, and some parts of Ukraine's northeast.
A US ban on imports of Russia's oil ratcheted up punishment for the invasion of Ukraine on Tuesday as McDonald's and Starbucks closed outlets and Moscow promised safe passage for some people to flee.
As the number of refugees created by the biggest assault on a European country since World War Two surpassed 2 million, several of the most internationally famous brands added to the Kremlin's global isolation on the 13th day of the incursion.
McDonald's, a symbol of capitalism that opened in Russia as the Soviet Union fell, and coffeehouse chain Starbucks will temporarily close stores, while Pepsi will stop selling its soft drink brands and Coca-Cola is halting business in the country.
Washington, meanwhile, imposed an immediate ban on imports of Russian energy, sparking a further increase in the oil price, which rose around 4 per cent on Tuesday. Prices have surged more than 30 per cent since Russia's incursion began on Feb. 24.
Russia - the world's second-largest exporter of crude - has warned the cost will skyrocket further if the West implements bans.
Despite the prospect of higher household bills, US President Joe Biden said President Vladimir Putin needed to face consequences for the assault.
"The American people will deal another powerful blow to Putin's war machine," he said.
The Kremlin describes its actions as a "special operation" to disarm Ukraine and unseat leaders it calls neo-Nazis.
Ukraine and Western allies call this a baseless pretext for an invasion that has raised fears of wider conflict in Europe and could deal a further hit to the world economy as it tries to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
Civilians fled the besieged city of Sumy on Tuesday in the first successful "humanitarian corridor" opened since Russia's invasion but Ukraine accused Russian forces of shelling another evacuation route, from Mariupol in the south of the country.
Talks between Kyiv and Moscow over safe passage have previously failed, with Ukraine opposing routes out of the country to Russia or its ally Belarus.
Moscow is ready to provide humanitarian corridors so people can leave capital Kyiv and four other cities - Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol - on Wednesday, Mikhail Mizintsev, head of Russia's National Defence Control Centre, was quoted as saying by the Tass news agency.
"In order to ensure the safety of civilians and foreign citizens, Russia will observe a regime of silence from 10 am Moscow time (0700 GMT) on March 9 and is ready to provide humanitarian corridors," he said. It was unclear if the proposed routes would pass through Russia or Belarus.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy renewed calls on Tuesday for no-fly zones, something the West has rejected for fears of escalating the conflict.
The United States turned down a surprise Polish offer to transfer MiG-29 fighter jets to a US base in Germany to help replenish Ukraine's air force.
The prospect of flying combat aircraft from NATO territory into the war zone "raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance," the Pentagon said.
Instead, the West has focussed its pressure on sanctions, mainly on individuals and financial institutions. Up until now, oil and natural gas had been excluded.
The United States is not a leading buyer of Russian oil and Europeans, who are far more reliant on it, have been reluctant to follow suit.
Britain, however, said it would also phase out the import of Russian oil and oil products by the end of 2022, while the EU published plans to cut its reliance on Russian gas by two thirds this year.
Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of Russia's State Duma lower house of parliament, said the measures would hurt Europe while helping the United States.
"By promoting sanctions against Russian energy resources, Washington is seeking to occupy the European market," he said in an online post.
'Apocalyptic'
In Mariupol, hundreds of thousands of people have been sheltering under bombardment for more than a week. Many tried to leave on Tuesday along a safe corridor but Ukraine's foreign ministry said Russian forces violated a ceasefire and shelled it.
Moscow denies targeting civilians.
International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Ewan Watson said people in Mariupol were fast running out of electricity, heat, food, and drinking water.
"The situation in Mariupol is apocalyptic," he said.
Russia opened a separate corridor out of the eastern city of Sumy. Buses left for Poltava further west, only hours after a Russian air strike which regional officials said had hit a residential area and killed 21 people. Reuters could not verify the incident.
Russia said 723 people had been evacuated via that corridor, including 576 Indian nationals.
Residents were also leaving Irpin, a frontline Kyiv suburb.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian troops repulsed efforts by Russian forces to enter the eastern city of Kharkiv on Tuesday and foiled a planned operation by 120 Russian paratroopers near the border, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said.
Five people, two of them children, were killed late on Tuesday when Russian planes attacked the town of Malyn, some 100 kilometres (62 miles) northwest of Kyiv, and destroyed seven houses, the state emergency service said in an online post. Reuters was unable to corroborate.
The United Nations human rights office said it had verified 1,335 civilian casualties in Ukraine, including 474 killed and 861 injured, since the invasion began on Feb. 24. The real toll is likely higher, it said.
A total of 2 million people, mostly women and children, have fled, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR.
Advance Slowed
Western countries say Russia's initial battle plan for a rapid strike to topple Ukraine's government failed early in the war, and Moscow has adjusted tactics for longer sieges of cities.
"The tempo of the enemy's advance has slowed considerably, and in certain directions where they were advancing it has practically stopped," Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych told a briefing on Tuesday.
Ukraine's defence ministry said Vitaly Gerasimov, first deputy commander of Russia's 41st army, was killed on Monday, the second Russian major general killed during the invasion. Russia's defence ministry could not be reached for comment.
The main Russian assault force heading towards Kyiv has been stuck on a road north of the capital. But to the south, Russia has made more progress along the Black and Azov Sea coasts.
Within Russia, the war has led to a severe new crackdown on dissent, with the last remaining independent media largely shut last week and foreign broadcasters banned.
Russian police arrested at least 100 protesters against the invasion of Ukraine on Tuesday, the OVD-Info monitoring group said. Police made no comment.
