Image source, Reuters

Away from the frontlines in Ukraine, international condemnation of Russia's invasion continues. Here's the latest:

• UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey says the UK and 25 other countries have agreed to provide more humanitarian aid and arms to Ukraine
• Estonia bans Russian airlines from its airspace, with fellow Baltic states Lithuania and Latvia set to follow suit
• More than 115,000 people have already crossed into Poland from Ukraine
• France seizes a Russian cargo ship in the English Channel, saying it belongs to a company targeted by EU sanctions
• Poland says it will refuse to play a 2022 World Cup play-off match that had been scheduled to take place in Moscow on 24 March
• More European countries, including France, Italy, and Hungary, signal they would back a move to exclude Russia from the Swift global payments system
• Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says his country doesn't need diplomatic ties with the West and that it's time to "padlock the embassies"
• Ukraine's foreign minister says Western sanctions, which have not so far targeted Russia's energy sector, should be expanded to include an oil embargo
• Protests take place in cities around Europe against the war

Image source, Reuters

The leader of Russia's Chechnya region says he has deployed his fighters to Ukraine to join battle with Russian troops.

In a video posted online, Ramzan Kadyrov said Chechen forces had so far successfully captured a Ukrainian military facility without suffering any casualties.

The leader of the southern Russian republic is a key ally of the Russian president.

Justifying the invasion, he says Putin's decision to attack Ukraine will prevent Moscow's enemies from using the country to launch an attack on Russia.

Chechen fighters loyal to Kadyrov have a notorious reputation and stand accused of human rights abuses.

Joe Tidy
Cyber-security reporter

Dramatic videos and images of the invasion and the suffering it has caused have been going viral on social media - now access to Twitter, where many such images are shared, has been blocked for users in Russia, internet connectivity company NetBlocks has told the BBC.

Services started being disrupted on Saturday morning across multiple providers.

Russian authorities and social media platforms have clashed over platform rules relating to the conflict with Ukraine.

"Russia's restriction of Twitter will significantly limit the free flow of information at a time of crisis when the public most need to stay informed," NetBlocks Director, Alp Toker, said.

Read more - Russia restricts social media access

A number of well-known Russians have been speaking out against their country's invasion of its neighbour.

Among them is high-profile tennis star Andrey Rublev, who appealed for peace by writing "No war please" on a camera lens after getting through to the final of the Dubai Tennis Championship.

Murad Shishani
BBC Arabic, Polish-Ukranian border

Everyone we saw at the Medyka border crossing between Ukraine and Poland was looking scared. They described scenes of war. One group of Yemeni students, who were studying in Ukraine, told me they had walked 40km to get to the Polish side.

“The situation in Ukraine is miserable, there’s no mercy for anyone. Women and children are caught up in a chaotic war,” Ahmed Omar told me.

His friend Mohamed Abdel-Aziz added: “The Ukrainian people are so kind. But it’s always like that - brutal force wins.”

Pavel is Polish and he’s been carrying a cardboard sign with a message that he’s offering free rides for refugees. He says there are too many people who need help. He’s right.

The UN estimates that the number of refugees who will pour into Poland will be over one million, and that up to four million in total could flee Ukraine.

Image source, Volodymyr Yermolenko

As Ukrainians find themselves facing a full-scale Russian attack on their country, one journalist has been telling us about how his three daughters are coping with the outbreak of war.

Volodymyr Yermolenko told BBC Radio 5 Live it was "remarkable" how his two youngest, aged three and five, appeared to understand what was going on around them.

He described a missile attack, which prompted him to take his daughters to an underground shelter.

"There I saw how the elder one, the five-year-old, [was] explaining to the youngest one what the war is.

"It was remarkable because I never told her what war is - she kind of knew it, maybe from kindergarten, maybe from our talks with my wife."

He said he asked his eldest daughter, a teenager, if she was frightened. "She said she was not."

More than 115,000 people have now crossed the border from Ukraine into Poland since the beginning of the Russian invasion, a Polish minister has said.

In the past four hours alone, 15,000 people entered the country, interior minister Pawel Szefernaker told a news conference.

Orla Guerin
Reporting from the Ukrainian capital

Kyiv today is a city bathed in sunlight, and a suffocating layer of tension.

The attack on the apartment building looks like a scene from a disaster movie - a chunk of it ripped away.

In the wreckage there are fragments of normal lives - a book, a child's photograph, a keyboard.

One family with small children rushes past, struggling with bags and a stroller, then cramming into a van to get away. In this European capital city, there is a real sense that nowhere is safe

Image source, Getty Images

Ukraine's defence ministry says it has shot down one of Moscow's troop carriers near Kyiv, killing a large number of Russian paratroopers.

The BBC has not independently verified these claims and the Russian defence ministry is yet to comment on the reports.

The defence ministry in Kyiv wrote in a Facebook post that Ukrainian Su-27 fighter jets intercepted a Russian IL-76 MD troop carrier at around 00:30 local time (22:30 GMT) on Saturday as it was trying to land paratroopers in the Kyiv region.

According to specifications released by the manufacturer, the plane can carry up to 167 soldiers, as well as a crew of six to seven people.

"This is revenge for Luhansk 2014," the commander of Ukraine's military, Lt Gen Valery Zaluzhny, wrote on Facebook, referring to the downing of a Ukrainian plane eight years ago, which killed 40 paratroopers and nine crew members.

Russian military spokesperson Maj Gen Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday that Moscow had suffered no casualties during the invasion.

Image source, Getty Images

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have tweeted their support for President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The British royal couple said they stood by him and the people of Ukraine:

More countries are banning Russian airlines from their airspace - the latest to announce such a move is the Baltic nation of Estonia, which borders Russia.

Fellow Baltic states Lithuania and Latvia are also preparing to take the step simultaneously, a statement by Lithuanian Transport Minister Marius Skuodis said.

Poland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have also imposed bans.

On Thursday, the UK banned Russia's national airline Aeroflot from landing in Britain.

Writing on Twitter, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas called on all other EU countries to follow suit.

"There is no place for planes of the aggressor state in democratic skies," she said.

It is the third day of fighting in Ukraine, with Russian forces attempting to take territory and major cities and Ukrainian forces resisting their advance.

Here's the latest:

• In the capital Kyiv, there were missile strikes and gun battles overnight but Ukrainians forces remain in control of the city
• The UK's defence ministry says Vladimir Putin's forces remain more than 30km (19 miles) away from Kyiv city centre
• Russian forces may now be regrouping after an initial failed attempt at infiltrating key government districts in Kyiv, Jack Watling, a military expert from the Rusi think-tank, tells the BBC
• In the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city, officials say troops have fought off a Russian attack. They've issued a shelling alert, warning citizens not to move around the city
• There have also been clashes near the southern city of Odesa, President Zelensky says
• Russia says it has captured the south-eastern city of Melitopol - but the UK has cast doubt on the claim
• Zelensky said western and central cities including Lviv had been targeted with missile strikes

We've been reporting on a missile strike on an apartment building in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, earlier this morning - this CCTV image shows the moment of impact.

Image source, Reuters

There is no confirmation of casualties from the incident yet but officials say 35 people were injured overnight.

Joe Tidy
Cyber-security reporter

Since the start of the Ukraine crisis, the country has been the target of near-constant cyber attacks, widely blamed on Russia.

But the attackers are not all working for the Kremlin.

One group of “patriotic” Russian vigilante hackers told me they did it for fun in their spare time, revelling in causing cyber-chaos.

Dmitry (not his real name) told me he wanted to help his country “beat Ukraine from behind his computer”.

In the past week he said he and his five accomplices had carried out numerous denial of service attacks, flooding Ukrainian servers with data and taking them temporarily offline.

They also emailed 20 bomb threats to schools, hacked into the live dashboard feeds of an unidentified Ukrainian "rapid response team" and found a way to set up official Ukrainian government emails ending "mail.gov.ua", he said.

The BBC watched as the group temporarily took down a Ukrainian military website.

"This is just the beginning," Dmitry said.

Read my full report here.

Image source, Gavin Guest

A British national whose Kyiv apartment was struck in the Russian invasion has described to the BBC scenes of pandemonium while trying to leave Ukraine.

"I found out this morning that my apartment has been hit in Kyiv. So I’ve lost everything in Kyiv," Gavin Guest told the BBC.

After walking 8km (five miles) to the border with Romania yesterday, Gavin was prevented by guards from crossing out of Ukraine. He estimates around 1,000 others were gathered at the same checkpoint also trying to leave.

"We showed our passports and they said, 'No, it doesn’t matter your nationality, we’re not letting any men through.'

"By about 8pm, they were starting to let some men through. But in this time they were only letting about five people through every half an hour."

Newly introduced Ukrainian rules restrict men aged between 18 and 60 who could be conscripted from crossing the borders.

Failing to cross into Romania, Gavin is now considering leaving by rail to Hungary - but the next service isn’t until late next week.

More now from our earlier reports of scattered fighting in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

Ukraine's security services have denied a report from the city's mayor that 60 Russian troops landed in the region overnight.

The State Security Service (SBU) said the information was false and that no such landing had taken place. It said a Ukrainian helicopter had done a reconnaissance flight in the area.

"We ask residents to remain calm!" the SBU said in a statement posted on Facebook.

Oleg Karpyak
BBC Ukranian service, Kyiv

I’m in the centre of Kyiv now which has emptied in the last two days - there are very few people and cars still out on the streets.

We can hear distant explosions and air raid sirens from time to time but the government district is silent and the Ukrainian military has blocked access to it.

They ask people not to film or photograph them and aim with their guns at every car approaching them, signalling drivers to turn away immediately.

Traffic lights keep changing on the empty roads and you can hear the hum of animated billboards scrolling through adverts.

Electricity, water, mobile connection and internet are still on.

I talked to a lonely passer-by with a cane who was limping in the direction of Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a 1000-year-old Orthodox monastery and until recently a popular tourist attraction.

His name is Ivan and said he lived right next to the Ministry of Defence.

I haven’t had any reports of fighting there yet, but we both understood what it means for him and his family.

Ivan has an elderly cousin staying at home who used to be a Soviet soldier in Afghanistan in the 1980s and who had returned back home with both legs amputated.

He was heading to Kyiv Pechersk Lavra to get some food for them both, happy that the monastery was still offering food for people in need.

I’m struck that when you talk to strangers now the conversation flows as if between two people who’ve met many times before. There is no awkwardness, no suspicion towards each other, no excessive politeness.

Kyiv's Mayor Vitali Klitschko has announced a new curfew for the Ukrainian capital from between 17:00 and 08:00 local time (15:00-06:00 GMT).

The measure, effective from today, replaces a previous curfew from 22:00 to 07:00.

Writing on Twitter, Klitschko warned, external: "All civilians on the street during the curfew will be considered members of the enemy's sabotage and reconnaissance groups."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been speaking in a video address, saying his country's forces have stopped a Russian plan to capture him overnight and install their own leader.

He also urged Russians to pressure President Vladimir Putin to stop the invasion.

"We've derailed their plan," Zelensky said.

Ukrainian forces were in control of Kyiv and the main cities around it, he said.

His country had earned the right to be a member of the European Union, he added.

Ukraine is not currently a member of the EU, but has enshrined in its constitution its aspirations to join the European bloc.