Representatives from aid groups attempting to help in Ukraine say their teams are facing attacks from Russian forces.
The executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières spoke of teams witnessing "atrocities" in towns they entered to provide medical care.
Catch up on Thursday's developments in our blog.
Key events
- UNICEF: Ukraine war raising malnutrition risk in Middle East
- Aid groups under siege
- Marise Payne says events in Bucha have reinforced global coordination
- Australia to impose sanctions on 67 Russians
- FBI says it disrupted Russian hackers
- UN will vote on Russian suspension from Human Rights Council
- More images surface from Bucha after mass destruction during war with Russia
- Images reveal the devastation in Borodyanka, outside Kyiv
- Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls on democratic nations to reject oil from Russia
- Thousands of civilian deaths reported in Mariupol
Live updates
By Caitlyn Davey
That's all folks
We'll wrap up the blog there for today but keep updated with news stories at our Just In section.
We'll be back tomorrow.
By Caitlyn Davey
UNICEF: Ukraine war raising malnutrition risk in Middle East
Food price rises caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine are increasing the risk of malnutrition for millions of children in the Middle East and North Africa, the UN children’s agency warns.
UNICEF added that families were struggling to put food on the table during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when observant Muslims abstained from eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset.
Countries in the Middle East and North Africa have been hard hit by wars and poverty and the coronavirus has only made things worse.
Russian troops began invading Ukraine on February 24. Since then, intense fighting in different parts of the country has disrupted food exports, and Western countries have imposed crippling economic sanctions on Russian institutions.
Ukraine and Russia account for a third of global wheat and barley exports, which countries in the Middle East rely on to feed millions of people who subsist on subsidised bread and bargain noodles. They are also top exporters of other grains and the sunflower seed oil that is used for cooking.
UNICEF warned that if the situation continued, it would severely impact children in the region, especially in Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, countries that were struggling with conflicts and severe economic crises even before the war in Europe began.
By Caitlyn Davey
Russian air attacks focus on east Ukraine, Mariupol holding out - presidential adviser
Russian air attacks are now focused mainly on areas of eastern Ukraine, and Russian forces are trying to encircle Ukrainian troops in the region, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said on Thursday.
He said the besieged southern city of Mariupol was holding out and he believed the Russian efforts to surround Ukrainian troops in the east would be in vain.
"The situation is under control," he said on national television.
By Caitlyn Davey
Russia takes punitive measures against Google over YouTube 'fakes'
Russia's communications watchdog said on Thursday it was taking punitive measures against Google, including a ban on advertising the platform and its information resources, for allegedly violating Russian law.
The Roskomnadzor watchdog accused YouTube, which has blocked Russian state-funded media globally from using its platform, of becoming "one of the key platforms spreading fakes (fake images) about the course of (Russia's) special military operation on the territory of Ukraine, discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation".
By Caitlyn Davey
By Caitlyn Davey
India to boost arms output, fearing shortfall from Russia
India on Thursday said it would ramp up its production of military equipment, including helicopters, tank engines, missiles and airborne early warning systems, to offset any potential shortfall from its main supplier Russia.
India depends on Russia for nearly 60 per cent of its defence equipment, and the war in Ukraine has added to doubts about future supplies.
Defence Ministry officials say India, with the world’s second-largest army, fourth-largest air force and seventh-largest navy, can’t sustain itself through imports.
"Our objective is to develop India as a defense manufacturing hub,” Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said Thursday while releasing a list of military equipment that will be produced domestically and no longer imported.
The ministry’s website said military orders worth 2,100 billion rupees ($37 billion) are likely to be placed with domestic state-run and private defence manufacturers in the next five years.
By Caitlyn Davey
Ukraine looks to evacuate trapped civilians through humanitarian corridors
Ukraine hopes to evacuate trapped civilians through 10 humanitarian corridors on Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk says, but residents trying to leave the besieged city of Mariupol will have to use their own vehicles
A total of 4,892 people were evacuated from Ukrainian cities through humanitarian corridors on Wednesday, more than the 3,846 who escaped on Tuesday, a senior Ukrainian official said.
Ukrainian authorities cannot help people evacuate from the eastern frontline town of Izyum, though, or send humanitarian aid because the town is completely under Russian control, the Kharkiv regional Governor said.
By Caitlyn Davey
NATO meets in Brussels
By Caitlyn Davey
Ukraine's SES shares photo of a kitten being rescued
Just something to break up the doom and gloom — Ukraine's state emergency service shared these sweet photos.
By Caitlyn Davey
Aid groups under siege
Avril Benoit, who is on assignment with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency response in Ukraine, has painted a dire picture of the devastating impact Russian forces have had on civilians across Ukraine's towns and cities.
Speaking to PM's Linda Mottram, the MSF executive director — who is currently in Lviv — said aid groups had come under siege alongside civilians.
Ms Benoit said an MSF team witnessed a Russian attack on two hospitals at the other end of the country in the Black Sea port town of Mykolaiv, which was still held by Ukrainian forces on Monday.
"All of a sudden there were explosions all around in close proximity and so they immediately took cover," she said.
The neighbourhood has a high concentration of hospitals and is largely residential.
"Ten minutes of a barrage, our own vehicle had been damaged, the windows blown out, but they were able to get away from that location safely, thankfully. But they were witnessing as they were driving out some bodies on the ground and really an unknown number of casualties,” she said.
Ms Benoit said her team was sending in a team tonight to the airport city of Hostomel, about an hour and a half west of the capital Kiev to help civilians there.
"There are reports of absolutely horrific things, like what we heard from Bucha, from the 35 days of Russian forces occupying that town of Hostomel," she said.
A clinic is starting up at the request of authorities, who went from having 12 doctors to one.
"They're also reporting the same kinds of atrocities, of people missing, bodies on the street … really lacking necessities of life for those 35 days," she said.
By Caitlyn Davey
Russian forces facing morale issues and shortages of supplies: UK Ministry of Defence
Britain's Ministry of Defence says Russian forces are likely to "continue facing morale issues and shortages of supplies and personnel", despite refocussing on the Donbas region.
The news was shared in an intelligence update, which outlined eastern Ukraine as the focus for Russian forces.
By Caitlyn Davey
Russia says it destroyed fuel storage facilities in four Ukrainian cities
The Russian defence ministry said on Thursday its missiles had destroyed four fuel storage facilities in the Ukrainian cities of Mykolayiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Chuhuiv overnight.
The ministry said the facilities were used by Ukraine to supply its troops near the cities of Mykolaiv and Kharkiv and in the Donbas region in the far south-east.
By Caitlyn Davey
Maldives shelters sanctioned Russian billionaires' yachts
In Italy, four days later, authorities seized another of Melnichenko's vessels – the world's largest sailing yacht, estimated by Italian financial police to be worth $US578 million.
Switching off devices that allow authorities to track a ship's whereabouts can help keep yachts out of their sight.
But in Maldives, the chances of action against the property of sanctioned oligarchs are in any case slim, according to interviews with a dozen people familiar with internal discussions about how to respond to US and European financial sanctions, including government ministers, diplomats and experts in the country's superyacht industry.
The cautious approach by authorities in Maldives to enforcing the sanctions imposed after Russia's invasion of Ukraine means that the Indian Ocean island nation has emerged as an attractive destination for yacht-owning Russian oligarchs.
By Caitlyn Davey
By Caitlyn Davey
Thousands of railcars stuck at border as war hits exports
In western Ukraine, some 1,100 train wagons carrying grain are stuck near the main rail border crossing with Poland, unable to transport their cargo abroad.
They are just some of the 24,190 wagons carrying various goods for export, including vegetable oil, iron ore, metals, chemicals and coal, that were waiting to cross Ukraine's Western border as of Tuesday, according to data from the state-run railway company that hasn't previously been reported.
With war raging along the country's southern coast, and its main ports blocked off by Russia's invasion, Ukraine is struggling to export its grain and other goods, according to government officials and industry insiders. But as Kyiv looks for alternative export routes by land, that effort has been hampered by logistical challenges and red tape, industry officials and commodity traders say.
By Caitlyn Davey
NATO countries asked to provide more weapons
NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg is calling on members of the organisation to provide more weapons for Ukraine and not just defensive anti-tank and anti-craft arms.
As NATO defence ministers gathered in Brussels on Thursday, Mr Stoltenberg said: “I have urged allies to provide further support of many different types of systems, both light weapons but also heavier weapons.”
Mr Stoltenberg said NATO countries, but not NATO as an organisation, were supplying many kinds of arms and other support to Ukraine but the allies could do more.
He said: “Ukraine is fighting a defensive war, so this distinction between offensive and defensive weapons doesn’t actually have any real meaning.”
Mr Stoltenberg is insisting it is also important for NATO not to be dragged into a wider war with Russia.
“NATO is not sending troops to be on the ground. We also have a responsibility to prevent this conflict from escalating beyond Ukraine, and become even more deadly, even more dangerous and destructive,” he said.
By Caitlyn Davey
Sanctioned Russians include 'Butcher of Mariupol' Deputy Prime Minister and Ukrainian member of parliament
Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne has issued a statement about the sanctions on 67 Russian nationals.
"Those sanctioned include prominent Russian military official Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, who has been described as the “Butcher of Mariupol”, for attacks including the bombing of the theatre in which innocent civilians were sheltering in Mariupol.
Also included:
- Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko
- Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov
- Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma, Aleksander Babakov
- Other senior Russian government officials
- Kremlin-installed so-called “mayor” of Melitopol, Ukrainian Galina Danilchenko
- Member of the Ukrainian Parliament Oleg Voloshyn, who has been working with Russia to undermine the Ukrainian Government
The statement also reads: "This latest round of sanctions follows the emergence of evidence of war crimes committed by Russia in Bucha and other towns around Kyiv. Australia condemns these atrocities in the strongest possible terms."
By Caitlyn Davey
Australian vet helping stranded animals amid air raids and checkpoints in Ukraine-Russia war
By Sarah Howells and Kylie Bartholomew
An Australian veterinarian in Ukraine's war zone has been confronted with disturbing scenes as he tends to hundreds of sick, injured and abandoned animals.
WARNING: This story contains content that some readers may find distressing.
Lachlan Campbell has been in the war-torn country for three weeks after initially only planning to go as far as the Polish-Ukraine border.
"I could see what I could do for the animals there," Dr Campbell said.
"I just really wanted to get in and actually help a lot more on the ground and more at the coalface."
For Dr Campbell, the work has been challenging and unpredictable, and unlike anything he has dealt with on home soil.
Animals left to starve
He described a shelter where only 150 of its 450 animals survived after volunteers had to flee.
"[The shelter] was surrounded by Russians, and the volunteers there had to abandon it, so all the animals were left for about a month without food or water," he said.
"One animal that we've seen today unfortunately was severely malnourished, but actually had both its back legs effectively eaten off by another animal that would have been starving as well.
"It's some pretty confronting scenes when you see large numbers of animals like that, but also the extremes they've had to go to, to survive."
By Caitlyn Davey
Marise Payne says events in Bucha have reinforced global coordination
That's following news of new sanctions being imposed on 67 Russians.
The Foreign Minister says: “The events we have seen uncovered in Bucha this week only reinforce the importance of strong global coordination in response to Russia for their actions.”
By Caitlyn Davey
Australia to impose sanctions on 67 Russians
Foreign Minister Marise Payne said on Thursday Australia was imposing sanctions on 67 Russians over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
"Today, I'm announcing 67 further sanctions of Russian elites and oligarchs, those close to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin who facilitate and support his outrageous actions," she told reporters as she arrived at NATO.
Russia says it launched a "special military operation" in Ukraine.
