Hundreds of Ukrainians have been killed and over a thousand have been injured, the United Nations says, while millions require lifesaving humanitarian assistance as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues for a third week.
Russian forces have struck heavily populated areas and civilian infrastructure, including a maternity hospital in the besieged southern city of Mariupol, which EU officials have labelled a war crime.
Russia said the hospital had stopped treating patients and had been occupied by Ukrainian "radicals".
The situation in the city of 430,000 is increasingly dire as civilians trapped inside the city scrounged for food and fuel.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said more than 1,300 people have died in the 10-day siege of the frigid city — much larger than the UN toll.
Residents have no heating or phone service, and many have no electricity.
Night-time temperatures are regularly below freezing, and daytime ones normally hover just above it. Bodies are being buried in mass graves.
The streets are littered with burned-out cars, broken glass and splintered trees.
"They have a clear order to hold Mariupol hostage, to mock it, to constantly bomb and shell it," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation.
He said the Russians began a tank attack right where there was supposed to be a humanitarian corridor.
Grocery stores and pharmacies were emptied days ago by people breaking in to get supplies, according to a local official with the Red Cross, Sacha Volkov.
A black market is operating for vegetables, meat is unavailable, and people are stealing gasoline from cars, Mr Volkov said.
Places protected from bombings are hard to find with basements reserved for women and children, he said.
Residents, Mr Volkov said, are turning on one another.
"People started to attack each other for food," he said.
Repeated attempts to send in food and medicine, and evacuate civilians, have been thwarted by Russian shelling, Ukrainian authorities said.
"They want to destroy the people of Mariupol. They want to make them starve," Ms Vereshchuk said.
"It's a war crime."
Nearly 2 million Ukrainians internally displaced, UN says
The UN said so far 516 people have died and 1,424 civilians have been injured since February 24, although it said it was likely the true number of casualties is much higher.
At least 2.3 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee the country, mostly into neighbouring Poland, Romania, Hungary, Moldova, and Slovakia.
Poland has carried the heaviest load of refugees, accepting over 1.4 million Ukrainians from the conflict.
In a sign the situation is becoming more desperate it is estimated 12 million people — or 30 per cent of Ukraine's population — requires life-saving humanitarian assistance.
The destruction of civilian infrastructure has left hundreds and thousands of Ukrainians without water and electricity.
The International Medical Corps said water, sanitation, and hygiene services need to be restored quickly across the country to avoid sickness and death from contaminated drinking water.
In addition to those who have fled the country, millions have been driven from their homes inside Ukraine.
An exhausted-looking Aleksander Ivanov pulled a cart loaded with bags down an empty street flanked by damaged buildings.
"I don't have a home anymore. That's why I'm moving," he said.
"It doesn't exist anymore. It was hit, by a mortar."
UN officials estimated 1.9 million people are displaced within the country.
Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that most of the internally displaced people are moving away from the front lines and heading west toward Lviv.
The humanitarian situation "continues to deteriorate at an alarming pace", he said.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said about 2 million people, half the population of the metropolitan area, have left the capital.
"Every street, every house … is being fortified," he said.
On Thursday, a 14-year-old girl named Katya was recovering at the Brovary Central District Hospital on the outskirts of Kyiv after her family was ambushed as they tried to flee the area.
She was shot in the hand when their car was raked with gunfire from a roadside forest said her mother, who identified herself only as Nina.
The girl's father, who drove frantically from the ambush on blown-out tires, has undergone surgery having been shot in the head with two fingers blown off.
AP/ABC
