Image source, Getty Images

The European Union has launched an unprecedented flurry of sanctions against Russia's most powerful people and companies.

On Monday, it released a list of 26 individuals who will face sanctions.

The list includes:

• Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov
• Alexander Ponomarenko, chairman of the board of Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow
• Igor Sechin, CEO of the state-owned Rosneft Oil Company
• Nikolay Tokarev, CEO of Transneft, the world's largest oil pipeline company
• Several Russian state TV presenters and journalists

The EU will also sanction the Gas Insurance Industry Company in Moscow, which reportedly aided the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The full list is available here, external.

Dozens of people have been killed in Russian missile strikes on Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv, officials say.

Videos shared on social media showed rockets landing in Kharkiv, in what some defence analysts described as typical of a cluster munition strike on a dense urban area.

Russia has previously denied targeting residential areas.

Thick black smoke could also been seen billowing from destroyed a shopping centre in the city of Chernihiv, in the north of Ukraine.

The footage in this video has been verified by the BBC, but the sources of some sections are unknown.

The US has expelled 12 Russian diplomats at the United Nations over national security concerns, US and Russian diplomats have said.

The members of Russia's mission have been asked to leave the US for engaging in non-diplomatic activities.

"Those diplomats that have been asked to leave the United States were engaged in activities that were not in accordance with their responsibilities and obligations as diplomats," Deputy US Ambassador Richard Mills told the UN Security Council, without elaborating further.

Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters they had been asked to leave by 7 March, Reuters news agency reports.

Rob Cameron
BBC Prague Correspondent

On Slovakia’s Vyske Nemecke border, large canvas tents stood where previously there was just a muddy field.

Inside, families sheltered from the wind that came in icy bursts. A diesel generator chugged away. People milled about, some with a purpose, others aimlessly.

“Kharkiv doesn’t want war. We don’t hate Russian people. We hate war,” said Nasta, who’d fled the bombing of Kharkiv with her three children, aged eight, six and two.

Nasta was worried for her sister and parents, left stranded in the bombardment. Her father is diabetic.

Other tents were bursting at the seams with packets of nappies and wet wipes, clothes, bottled water. Soup, tea and coffee was ladled from tureens, sandwiches were made, people handed out SIM cards. All have been provided by a combination of charities and local people. The response to the crisis from Slovaks has been overwhelming.

But not everyone here had Europe’s large Ukrainian diaspora to turn to.

“I was studying, staying up through the night doing an assignment, when all of a sudden there were bomb blasts,” said Love, a Nigerian student at Kharkiv’s National Aerospace University.

“I don’t want to go home to Nigeria,” Love said. Luckily, she was traveling with her sisters, and her parents had sent her some money.

“Let’s just see what happens.”

The US Defence Department says that almost 75% of the Russian forces assembled on Ukraine's borders are now inside the country.

The main advance of troops is now positioned about 25 km from the capital Kyiv, roughly a 5 km gain since Sunday.

Soldiers have yet to capture two key cities: Kharkiv in the northeast and Mariupol in the South.

As Western officials have previously noted, troops are not making the progress they had planned due to logistical issues and fierce resistance by Ukrainian fighters.

“They're using pretty much everything that they have in their arsenal, from small arms all the way up to surface to air missiles to try to slow down the Russians,” a senior US defence official said.

The official said the US has not seen any indications yet of specific Russian movements with regard to President Putin's nuclear deterrence announcement on Sunday.

The Pentagon is also yet to see Belarusian forces moving to provide backup to the Russians.

Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs has said that Russian missile strikes have hit residential buildings in the Kyiv region.

Three five-storey buildings were destroyed by a rocket attack about three hours ago, according to the ministry's Facebook page.

A spokeswoman for the region's State Emergency Service said it was searching for at least two people buried under the rubble in the town of Bila Tserkva. The BBC has not been able to independently verify the claims.

Germany is sending Tornado warplanes and a maritime patrol aircraft on a reconnaissance mission to the Baltic Sea area, Germany's mission to Nato has said.

A spokesperson for the defence ministry in Berlin said she could not immediately give any details due to operational security concerns, Reuters news agency reports.

Earlier in the day, the German navy dispatched six additional warships, four of them to the Baltic Sea.

Night has fallen across Ukraine after the fifth day of Russia's invasion.

If you're just joining us, or catching up on the latest developments, here's what's been going on:

• Air raid sirens have been heard again in Kyiv and residents have taken shelter in the wake of fresh reports of new Russian attacks on the outskirts of the Ukraine capital
• Dozens of civilians were killed earlier today in Russian missile strikes on Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv, the interior ministry said

• Negotiators from Kyiv and Moscow have held talks in Belarus in a bid to end the conflict. Russia says both sides agreed to continue discussions and will meet again "in the next few days"
• Ahead of that meeting, Ukraine's President Zelensky urged Russian troops to lay down their weapons and called for immediate EU membership for his country
• Shell has announced an end all of its joint ventures with the Russian energy company Gazprom following the invasion of Ukraine
• Global economic sanctions saw Russia more than double its interest rate to 20% in a bid to halt a steep fall in the value of the rouble
• The UN says more than half a million refugees have now fled Ukraine for neighbouring countries

• Fifa and Uefa have suspended all Russian clubs and national teams from competitions

The International Criminal Court will seek to open an investigation into alleged war crime conducted by Russia in Ukraine.

"There is a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine," Karim AA Khan, the ICC prosecutor has said.

"It is my intention that this investigation will also encompass any new alleged crimes falling within the jurisdiction of my Office that are committed by any party to the conflict on any part of the territory of Ukraine".

Khan will need to be granted permission from ICC judges to open the inquiry.

Oleg Karpyak

Underground and above ground in central Kyiv, more and more life has been slowing to a stop.

Independence Square - Maidan, in Ukrainian - is the city’s heart, and is typically bustling. Today, it's been deserted.

The underground metro now only operates a train every hour or two and carriages are half empty. Meanwhile, people continue to use the stations, deep beneath the city, as bomb shelters.

Some of the people out on the streets today were Russian-speakers, the people Russia has accused Ukraine of persecuting.

A young man approached me with a black AK-47 on his shoulder and a yellow band around his right arm – a symbol that he is a civilian volunteer. He was called Artem and uses Russian and Ukrainian mixed in his conversation.

Artem said that as a Russian-speaker, he'd never encountered any problems in Ukraine before the invasion.

“This war has united people as never before,” he said.

Michelle Roberts
Health editor, BBC News online

Image source, Getty Images

The Belgian federal agency for nuclear control is tweeting, external telling people not to take radiation-blocking iodine pills without advice from authorities.

Many countries, including the UK, have a stockpile of these tablets in case of a major nuclear accident or leak. They should only be used if recommended by medical experts though for good reason.

There are health risks associated with taking them, external, so they are not something people should try to buy or acquire themselves to take.

Potassium iodide pills help block radioactive iodine from being absorbed in a part of the body called the thyroid gland, which is located in the neck.

They are a useful counter-measure because radioactive iodine that is breathed in or consumed in food and drink can be stored the gland for some time. The tablets only help protect the thyroid gland, not other parts of the body.

Gordon Corera
Security correspondent, BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

On Sunday, President Putin ordered his military to move Russia's "deterrent forces" - which include nuclear weapons - to a "special mode of combat duty". But what exactly does that mean?

It is not entirely clear, Western analysts say. UK officials say the language Putin used did not quite fit with their understanding of the alert levels for Russian nuclear weapons.

Some think Putin was ordering a move from the lowest alert level, "constant", to the next level up, "elevated", (with "military danger" and "full" still above) but that was not certain. Each move increases readiness for weapons to be used.

Many, though, have interpreted the move primarily as a form of public signalling, rather than indicating a real intent to use such weapons, which Putin knows will bring nuclear retaliation by the West. UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has indicated he believes the announcement was primarily "rhetoric".

Read more here.

Google has disabled live traffic data in Ukraine from being displayed on its Maps app in the wake of the Russian invasion.

The app displays how busy roads are by collecting anonymous data from Android smartphones, but it has now been switched off in the region temporarily to protect users.

Google confirmed the move to the BBC, having told Reuters it took the action for the safety of local communities, after consulting regional authorities.

While traffic data has been disabled, normal maps navigation features are still functioning properly in the area.

Find out more about Google's move here.

Shayan Sardarizadeh and Olga Robinson
Disinformation specialists at BBC Monitoring

Image source, Getty Images

We're continuing to look into false or misleading claims from the conflict that are going viral – being seen by millions online.

A number of old videos and photos are being passed around, described as current when in reality they're old – and in some cases from other countries around the world.

And a different type of claim is being made around pictures that were on the front pages of news sites around the world over the weekend.

Some people – running a variety of pro-Russia and conspiracy-themed accounts – claim the photo above, of a woman injured in a Russian attack, is really from a 2018 gas explosion. That's not true.

The photo was taken on 24 February and has been verified by the photographers who took them and the metadata attached to the images.

Read the latest on false and misleading claims here.

Cyber chaos afoot but no cyber warpublished at 19:12 Greenwich Mean Time 28 February 2022

19:12 GMT 28 February 2022

Analysis

Joe Tidy
Cyber-security reporter

Image source, Getty Images

Fears that Russia would launch a so-called "cyber war" to accompany its invasion have so far been unfounded.

But there is chaos in the cyber realm. Ukraine is under a constant bombardment of small-scale cyber attacks from unknown sources.

We don't know where these attacks are coming from but Western intelligence services have blamed a recent wave of low-level DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) hacking on Russian military intelligence hackers.

The Ukrainian authorities also blame Belarusian state hackers for attempted phishing and malware hacks.

We also know that vigilante Russian hackers are operating too, perhaps independently of the authorities.

But the activity that is gaining the most attention and potentially causing the most problems is actually against Russia.

"Hacktivist" group Anonymous claims it defaced Russian news websites with Ukrainian messages of support, and say they even interrupted a Russian TV channel.

But these fleeting low-level attacks are hard to verify and some hackers claiming to be Anonymous are notorious attention-grabbers.

Meanwhile a Ukrainian governement channel on the messaging platform Telegram has emerged calling itself the "IT Army of Ukraine", gathering 230,000 members and the Ukrainian authorities are publishing details of which Russian targets to hack.

The amount of hacking taking place against Russia is extraordinary but at the moment it can be seen as cyber vandalism causing chaos and confusion more than serious cyber conflict.

Over the past few days we've reported that many Ukrainians are prepared to bear arms to defend their country, one such person is Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko, who is sheltering in a basement with her family.

She told Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4 how she had been trained to use an assault rifle to defend herself and her country.

Lesia revealed that she'd had a manicure but had to cut off all her nails in order to use the guns that she owns.

She said there were now tens of thousands of women in Ukraine prepared to "fight for their lives".

You can find her whole interview here.

Image source, Kseniia Putiatina

"I am heartbroken," says Kseniia Putiatina, 29, who is adapting to life as a new refugee.

She has now been travelling for more than three days, since leaving her home in Odessa, southern Ukraine. She is currently waiting for a flight from Romania to Turkey, and says her friends have also spread across Europe.

"There are lots of cases of survivor’s guilt," she says. "Lots of us have left our families. I left my mum with my cat. The older generation doesn’t want to leave.

"There have been lots of difficult negotiations within families," she says. "But we made our decisions, and we are now trying to navigate our new reality."

As a finance manager for an e-sports company, Kseniia can work remotely. She says the only silver lining is the support she has received from others along the way.

"Every person I have ever met from abroad has messaged and offered me help."

You can follow more of Kseniia’s story in Panorama Putin’s War in Ukraine at 19:30 GMT on BBC One.

Image source, Getty Images

Shell is ending all its ventures with Russian companies, with chief executive Ben van Beurden condemning its invasion of Ukraine as a "senseless act of military aggression".

It will sell its stakes in joint ventures with Gazprom, Russia's majority state-owned energy company, including a 27.5% stake in a major liquified natural gas plant.

The decision comes after BP decided to offload its share of a state-owned oil firm, Rosneft.

Shell also plans to end its involvement in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which it helped finance along with a collection of other companies. Germany has already halted the project.

The company said it would take a hit to its balance sheet, with its ventures with Gazprom valued at about $3bn (£2.3bn).

"Our decision to exit is one we take with conviction. We cannot - and we will not - stand by," van Beurden said.

Read more on the story

Rebecca Skippage
Disinformation Editor, BBC News

As the first Russian troops entered Ukraine last week, the BBC's disinformation and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) journalists came together with language and regional experts to verify the vast amount of video and claims saturating social media.

Working around the clock, using reverse-image searches, geo-location tools, linguistic expertise, local knowledge and subject experts, they have verified or debunked hundreds of images, enabling colleagues across the BBC to tell the true story on the ground.

Here's an example - this video has 9.5 million views on Twitter alone. It went super-viral. But it also looked unlikely:

Would a Ukrainian driver really joke with a Russian soldier in the middle of a war? The video itself wasn't geolocated, making it difficult to be sure where and when it was filmed.

Russian and Ukrainian colleagues checked the accents - and they sounded genuine. They used other location techniques to find it was filmed in a rural area in Sumy Oblast, north-eastern Ukraine.

They then wanted to check it wasn't old (a typical misinformation tactic), so they reverse-searched the internet to see if it had appeared before: No.

But it's not only about using technology - they also discussed if it was possible to stage the incident for clicks. They decided it was very unlikely, so the verdict? True.

Cecilia Macaulay
BBC News

Image source, Reuters

We're hearing of fresh fighting in Ukraine's capital this evening but a number of other cities have also been under Russian bombardment.

Oleg Svist, in Chernihiv, has told the BBC his city is undergoing heavy fire from all sides.

"I hear explosions from everywhere," he says. It is "like a circle around me".

"It's imminent, it's not somewhere far away, they're bombing the centre of Chernihiv."

The IT specialist, 48, says he is willing to "shoot" at Russian soldiers to defend his country.

He says there are bomb raid sirens every 20 minutes, but he is not taking cover in basements.

It is "too late to hide", he says, and he will not flee because it is "impossible" anyway, and "nobody is doing it".

Instead, there are long queues of citizens waiting to get their hands on weapons.

Near his house is a gathering spot for people to get armour, including Kalashnikovs, and every day, people of all ages are demanding weapons and protective gear.