Russian strikes hit near airports on Friday in the western Ukrainian cities of Ivano-Frankiivsk and Lutsk, far from Russia's main offensive, possibly indicating a new direction in the war.
The mayor of Ivano-Frankiivsk, Ruslan Martsinkiv, ordered residents in neighbouring areas to head to shelters after an air raid alert. The mayor of Lutsk also announced an airstrike near the airport. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
"Explosions were heard near the airfield. Everyone go to bomb shelters! Do not publish any photos, addresses and locations!" Lutsk Mayor Ihor Polishchuk wrote on Facebook.
New satellite photos, meanwhile, appeared to show a massive convoy outside the Ukrainian capital had fanned out into towns and forests near Kyiv with artillery pieces raised for firing in another potentially ominous movement.
The photos emerged amid more international efforts to isolate and sanction Russia, particularly after a deadly airstrike on a maternity hospital in the port city of Mariupol that Western and Ukrainian officials decried as a war crime.
The US and other nations were poised to announce the revocation of Russia's "most favoured nation" trade status, which would allow higher tariffs to be imposed on some Russian imports.
Morning in Ukraine brings reports of more devastating Russian strikes and troop movements across the country. While Ukrainian forces have done a hell of a job, the Russians are slowly advancing and trying to pound cities into submission. This video shows a strike in Lutsk, NW. pic.twitter.com/oDJ3Zaw9UL
Unbowed by the sanctions, Russia kept up its bombardment of the besieged southern seaport of Mariupol while Kyiv braced for an onslaught, its mayor boasting that the capital had become practically a fortress protected by armed civilians.
New satellite images have shed fresh light on what's really going on in Ukraine, revealing a major change of plans for Putin's forces.
A massive, 64km convoy of Russian tanks and troops en route to Kyiv sent shockwaves across the globe recently. But new satellite images have revealed the line has been "largely dispersed and redeployed", according to Maxar Technologies.
This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows troops and military vehicles deployed in Ozera, Ukraine, northeast of Antonov Airport. Photo / AP
This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows troops and military vehicles deployed in Ozera, Ukraine, northeast of Antonov Airport. Photo / AP
Many vehicles are now positioned on roads in residential areas in the town of Ozera, with others "repositioned" to forested areas near Lubyanka.
Some vehicles do remain in position southeast of Ivankiv, where the convoy previously ended, although it's a fraction of what was there previously.
The redeployment comes after reports emerged that the convoy had stalled due to critical food and fuel shortages, with the line also attacked by Ukrainian defenders.
The likelihood is increasing that #Ukrainian forces could fight to a standstill the #Russian ground forces attempting to encircle and take #Kyiv.
Meanwhile, a report from the Institute For the Study of War has claimed that it was getting more and more likely that Ukrainian forces could fight Russian troops attempting to encircle Kyiv into a standstill.
"Russian forces also appear to be largely stalemated around Kharkiv and distracted from efforts to seize that city," the report states.
This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows troops and equipment deployed in trees, northwest of Antonov Airport in Lubyanka, Ukraine. Photo / AP
This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows the southern end of Antonov Airport and fires at the fuel storage area after the Russian invasion, in Hostomel. Photo / AP
"Russian advances in the south around Mykolayiv and toward Zaporizhya and in the east around Donetsk and Luhansk made little progress as well in the last 24 hours."
Russian Colonel killed - reports
A top Russian commander has reportedly been killed and a convoy of Russian tanks obliterated in a surprise ambush by Ukrainian forces near Kyiv.
The attack occurred as Russian forces were advancing towards Brovary, a suburb on the outskirts of the capital.
However, footage taken from the scene showed the tanks being hit by artillery, forcing what remained of the column to retreat.
Incredible drone video of a Russian tank column ambush reportedly from 6th regiment near Brovary Region, Kyiv oblast. The audio looks to be an intercept of a Russian officer calling superiors to report the ambush and death of regiment commander pic.twitter.com/Fyk3jao7mL
According to Ukraine's defence ministry, a top commander, Colonel Andrei Zakharov, was killed in the onslaught.
Three Russian generals have previously been killed over the course of the invasion.
A destroyed Russian tank is seen after battles on a main road near Brovary, north of Kyiv. Photo / AP
Photo / AP
'Desperate' Putin fires generals over invasion fail
A top Ukrainian defence chief has claimed the Russian President is so furious over his army's stalled invasion he has fired a string of top generals in retribution.
According to newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda, Defence Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said Putin was enraged by Russia's failure to swiftly seize Kyiv and other major cities.
"[The enemy] had about 8 generals removed from their posts because they did not complete the task. New ones have been appointed," Danilov was reported as saying.
"We clearly understand what is happening in the Russian Federation.
"What's more, I can tell they're desperate."
It comes as Ukraine scored another significant win, after special forces captured a mobile Russian anti-aircraft missile launcher.
In an announcement on Twitter, Ukraine's Defence Ministry said the seizing of the Pantsir-CI air defence system was "another 'special' trophy" stolen from the invaders.
The post was accompanied by a photo of a soldier posing in front of the weapon with his face blacked out.
The equipment is believed to be worth a staggering $US15 million.
War crime - 'angry, frustrated' Putin under fire over hospital attack
A Russian airstrike on a Mariupol maternity hospital that killed three people brought condemnation down on Moscow, with Ukrainian and Western officials branding it a war crime, while the highest-level talks yet yielded no progress in stopping the fighting.
Emergency workers renewed efforts to get food and medical supplies into besieged cities and get traumatised civilians out.
Ukrainian authorities said a child was among the dead in Wednesday's airstrike in the vital southern port of Mariupol. In addition to the dead, 17 people were wounded, including women waiting to give birth, doctors, and children buried in the rubble.
This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows a close view of Chernobyl nuclear facilities, Ukraine. Photo / AP
Images of pregnant women covered in dust and blood dominated news reports in many countries and brought a new wave of horror over the 2-week-old war sparked by Russia's invasion, which has killed thousands of soldiers and civilians, shaken the foundations of European security and driven more than 2 million people from Ukraine.
Putin 'angry and frustrated' by Russia's failure
Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly "angry and frustrated" by Ukraine's resistance and the failure of his troops to capture Kyiv.
That's according to CIA director William Burns, who told America's ABC news that his frustration would likely cause Putin to "double down" attacks against the nation "with no regard for civilian casualties".
"He has no sustainable political endgame in the face of what is going to continue to be fierce resistance from Ukrainians," Burns said.
"Putin has commented privately and publicly over the years that he doesn't believe Ukraine's a real country. He's dead wrong about that – real countries fight back.
"And that's what the Ukrainians have done quite heroically over the last 12 days."
A woman walks outside the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. Photo / AP
Ukrainian president hits out on war crimes
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Russian leaders that the invasion will backfire on them as their economy is strangled. Western sanctions have already dealt a severe blow to the economy, causing the rubble to plunge, foreign businesses to flee and prices to rise sharply.
"You will definitely be prosecuted for complicity in war crimes," he said in a video address. "And then, it will definitely happen, you will be hated by Russian citizens — everyone whom you have been deceiving constantly, daily, for many years in a row, when they feel the consequences of your lies in their wallets, in their shrinking possibilities, in the stolen future of Russian children."
A woman walks outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine. Photo / AP
Millions more have been displaced inside the country. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said today that about 2 million people — half the population of the capital's metropolitan area — have left the city, which has become virtually a fortress.
"Every street, every house … is being fortified," he said. "Even people who in their lives never intended to change their clothes, now they are in uniform with machine guns in their hands."
Bombs fell on two hospitals in a city west of Kyiv on Wednesday, its mayor said. The World Health Organisation said it has confirmed 18 attacks on medical facilities since the invasion began.
Western officials said Russian forces have made little progress on the ground in recent days. But they have intensified the bombardment of Mariupol and other cities, trapping hundreds of thousands of people, with food and water running short.
Temporary cease-fires to allow evacuations and humanitarian aid have repeatedly faltered, with Ukraine accusing Russia of continuing its bombardments. But Zelenskyy said 35,000 people managed to get out on Wednesday from several besieged towns, and more efforts were under way today in eastern and southern Ukraine — including Mariupol — as well as in the Kyiv suburbs.
The Mariupol city council posted a video showing buses driving down a highway. It said a convoy bringing food and medicine was on the way despite several days of thwarted efforts to reach the city.
Cars drive past a destroyed Russian tank as a convoy of vehicles evacuating civilians leaves Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine. Photo / AP
"Everyone is working to get help to the people of Mariupol. And it will come," said Mayor Vadym Boychenko.
Images from the city, where hundreds have died and workers hurried to bury bodies in a mass grave, have drawn condemnation from around the world. Residents have resorted to breaking into stores for food and melting snow for water. The city has been without heat for days as nighttime temperatures fall below freezing and daytime ones hover just above it.
A child looks out a steamy bus window with drawings on it as civilians are evacuated from Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv. Photo / AP
"The only thing [I want] is for this to be finished," Volodymyr Bykovskyi said as he stood by a freshly dug trench where bodies were being buried. "I don't know who's guilty, who's right, who started this. Damn them all, those people who started this!"
When the series of blasts hit the children's and maternity hospital in Mariupol, the ground shook more than a mile away. Explosions blew out windows and ripped away much of the front of one building. Police and soldiers rushed to the scene to evacuate victims, carrying a bleeding woman with a swollen belly on a stretcher past burning and mangled cars. Another woman wailed as she clutched her child.
Regional Ukrainian police official Volodymir Nikulin, standing in the ruins, called the attack "a war crime without any justification." Britain's Armed Forces minister, James Heappey, said that whether the hospital was hit by indiscriminate fire or deliberately targeted, "it is a war crime."
People line up to get water at the well in outskirts of Mariupol. Photo / AP
US Vice President Kamala Harris, on a visit to Ukraine's neighbour Poland, backed calls for an international war-crimes investigation into the invasion, saying, "The eyes of the world are on this war and what Russia has done in terms of this aggression and these atrocities."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed concerns about civilian casualties as "pathetic shrieks" from Russia's enemies. He claimed without providing evidence that the Mariupol hospital had been seized by far-right radical fighters who were using it as a base — despite the fact that photographs from the aftermath showed pregnant women and children at the site.
Several rounds of talks have not stopped the fighting, and a meeting in a Turkish Mediterranean resort between Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, failed to find much common ground.
In their highest-level talks since the war began, the two sides discussed a 24-hour cease-fire but did not make progress, Kuleba said. He said Russia was still seeking "surrender from Ukraine".
"This is not what they are going to get," he said, adding that he was willing to continue the dialogue.
A military priest tries to comfort a crying woman who was evacuated from Irpin, at a triage point in Kyiv. Photo / AP
Lavrov said Russia was ready for more negotiations but showed no sign of softening Moscow's demands.
Russia has alleged that Western-looking, US-backed Ukraine poses a threat to its security. Western officials suspect Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to install a government friendly to Moscow in Kyiv as part of an effort to draw the former Soviet state back into its orbit.
Russia's military is struggling, facing heavier losses and stronger Ukrainian resistance than it apparently anticipated. But Putin's forces have used airpower to pummel key cities, often shelling populated areas.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, 91-year-old Alevtina Shernina sat wrapped in a blanket, an electric heater at her feet, as cold air blew in through a damaged window. She survived the brutal World War II siege of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, and is now under siege again, her health too fragile for her to be moved.
Her daughter-in-law Natalia said she was angry that Shernina "began her life in Leningrad under the siege as a girl who was starving, who lived in cold and hunger, and she's ending her life" in similar circumstances.
"There were fascists there and there are fascists here who came and bombed our buildings and windows."
