Access to independent journalism is becoming increasingly difficult in Russia as the government clamps down.

To combat this, the BBC has announced it will be increasing access to its reporting by launching TikTok accounts dedicated to videos of the war in Ukraine in both English and Russian.

Although TikTok suspended new content and live-streaming in Russia on Sunday, the BBC said "we know that audiences find ways of getting to, and sharing, the content".

It also said it will be making a daily half-hour news bulletin available free-of-charge to other broadcasters who are members of the European Broadcasting Union.

You can find more information on how to access BBC News here.

“Normally when you wake up it’s to the sound of an alarm, right? But we wake up [to] the sound of bombs, airstrikes, shelling.”

Vipin Yadav, 24, is a medical student from India who's trapped in the city of Sumy in northern Ukraine. It’s been targeted by Russian forces for days.

He’s had no food to eat for four to five days, apart from protein powder that – in his life before the invasion – he would use to fuel a gym workout.

Vipin says he and his fellow students have run out of water and the only way they’re able to drink anything is by melting snow from outside.

Krishnanunni, another Indian medical student stuck in Sumy, told the BBC he was “very much desperate” after a failed attempt at evacuation earlier today.

As his group was boarding an evacuation bus he says a “blast” was heard and everyone was told to return to their accommodation.

A few days ago he sent us this video of the hostel he's staying in:

The third round of talks between Ukraine and Russia have come to an end.

A Ukrainian adviser to the president's office said there was some "small positive" progress on the logistics of humanitarian corridors. And Reuters news agency quoted a Ukrainian negotiator as saying no agreement had been reached that significantly improved the broader situation.

A Kremlin aide said the talks in Belarus had "failed to live up to our expectations", in remarks broadcast on Russian TV.

Both sides say talks will continue.

James Waterhouse
Kyiv correspondent, BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

The tide of people funnelling out of Ukraine’s capital by train has eased, but not by much.

When you walk down the steps into the station’s underpass you're met with faces of fatigue. Dozens of expressionless stares. People who've waited until the 12th day of this invasion before making the painful decision to move their entire lives to safety.

The humanitarian crisis in this war is deepening. So would people here consider going against the tide and accept Russia’s own offer of a path out of this conflict?

"Never!" says Alina. "Especially to Russia! No, it's better here or to European countries but not to Russia."

"They never tell the truth," says another man, pushing his child on a trolley. "You cannot trust them, ever."

For so many Ukrainians this war is about resisting or escaping Russia’s control. To head there is inconceivable.

Image source, Getty Images

EU membership applications from Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova are going to be considered by the European Commission.

The decision to consider the applications, taken by EU ambassadors, needs to be signed off by the European Council - but that's being described as a procedural formality.

Member states' permanent representatives discussed the applications, received over the last week, at a meeting today, and agreed to invite the Commission to present an opinion on each.

However it may take some time - an opinion from the Commission can take up to 18 months to prepare. And if successful, the process to join the EU usually takes years.

A man has been arrested after a large van crashed through the gates of the Russian embassy in Dublin.

It's understood that no-one was injured.

However, police in the Irish capital say they’re investigating the incident as criminal damage. The roads near the embassy are temporarily closed.

Irish broadcaster RTE tweeted this video:

Evacuation attempts from the besieged southern port city of Mariupol largely failed when ceasefires broke down on both Saturday and Sunday.

The city has been encircled by Russian forces for days, with communication lines down, no power, and food rapidly running out.

But we're hearing that a small number of people have managed to escape from the city.

Local journalist Anna Romanenko told the BBC a column of private cars managed to leave the city. One of those who fled told her that by driving along small rural roads under cover of darkness, they were able to reach territory controlled by Ukraine.

Orla Guerin
BBC News, Irpin

Getting out of Irpin means picking your way over a mass of rubble, jagged boulders and metal bars that now litter the bed of the Irpin river.

This is the remains of a bridge blown up by Ukrainian forces to block – or at least slow – Russian armour reaching the capital. Planks of wood are balanced precariously on the wreckage.

One elderly man almost tumbled from a plank into the water. Then he summoned his courage and shuffled forward. Nearby a woman lay flat on the ground on the riverbank – conscious but immobile. We were told she had fallen. No one knew how to try to move her.

As we filmed, a gunshot rang out.

A Ukrainian soldier took a screaming young boy by the hand and ran with him to cover. Two others grabbed a buggy. Another helped a woman on a crutch, who was breathless with exertion.

Kyiv lies just straight down the road, about half an hour’s drive away – a distance of 26km or 16 miles. That’s why Irpin matters so much to both sides.

Read the full report from Orla Guerin here

Image source, State Emergency Service of Ukraine via Reuters

On the outskirts of Kyiv, in the suburb of Irpin, there has been continued Russian shelling, but authorities say 2,000 people have managed to leave via a makeshift bridge.

Also near the capital, in Hostomel, the village council says Mayor Yuri Prylypko was shot dead while distributing bread and medicines. The strategic Hostomel airfield is nearby.

Meanwhile in the south, the city of Mykolaiv has come under attack. Ukraine says artillery hit residential areas overnight in the city, which stands between Russian-annexed Crimea and the southern port city of Odesa.

Tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in the large port city of Mariupol without power and with food and water in short supply. A family that escaped told AFP news agency they had seen "bodies everywhere". Controlling Mariupol would give Russia a land corridor between Crimea and the Russian-backed regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Read more: Day 12 in maps

Sarah Rainsford
BBC Eastern Europe Correspondent

At Dnipro rail station, people face at least a six-hour wait in the snow and the cold to board an evacuation train headed west.

Many began queueing at 08:00 local time, including families from Dnipro itself, who see the war creeping closer to them and want to get out while they still can.

A few days ago, there were chaotic scenes on the platforms here, as people shoved their way onto carriages.

Now, there's an orderly queue stretching for hours along the square. Volunteers arrived earlier with cups of hot rice and slices of bread.

There are whole families in the queue for the train, but police removed men of fighting age and told them to report for combat.

I spoke to a family from Kharkiv who arrived a couple of days ago, after more than a week in their bomb shelter.

The parents were sending the teenage girls on the train - without knowing where they'd end up.

The mother was in tears and said she refused to abandon Ukraine and intended to stay in Dnipro with her husband.

Joel Gunter
BBC News, reporting from Lviv, Ukraine

The western Ukrainian city of Lviv has reached the limit of its capacity to help refugees displaced by the Russian invasion, its mayor said on Monday.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced people have flowed into Lviv since the invasion began, putting a huge strain on the city's resources.

Mayor Andriy Sadoviy said about 200,000 people were now staying in Lviv and about 50,000 were passing through the station every day.

"We understand there will be another wave," Sadoviy said. He called on international humanitarian organisations to step up their assistance to the city.

On Monday morning, Viktoria Khrystenko, a city council official, told the BBC that all of the city's temporary shelter beds were taken, and she asked local businesses to open their shopfronts and storage units to take people in.

Lviv's central station has become a waypoint for people fleeing places all over Ukraine - especially the heavily shelled cities of Kharkiv, Mariupol and Chernihiv, and the capital Kyiv.

Read more from the BBC on the scene at Lviv central station here.

Image source, EPA

Earlier we told you how Lithuanian foreign minister was calling for embargoes on Russian energy sales, suggesting Russian oil and gas was being paid for "with the blood of Ukraine".

UK PM Boris Johnson has said Europe can't simply shut down the use of oil and gas overnight, at a joint press conference with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and Dutch premier Mark Rutte

"There are different dependencies in different countries, and we have to be mindful of that. You can't simply close down the use of oil and gas overnight, even from Russia," Johnson said.

He conceded "we can go fast in the UK" - what we need to do "is make sure we are all moving the same direction".

"We are going to do it together - making sure that we all have the substitutes and supplies that we need."

Rutte acknowledged that dependence on Russian energy supplies "was still there" in many parts of Europe - and he called for any ban to be done "diligently".

Image source, AFP

Canada has announced new sanctions against 10 individuals "complicit" in the "unjustified invasion" of Ukraine.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the 10 included "former and current senior government officials, oligarchs and supporters of the Russian leadership".

Speaking at the joint press conference with the UK and Dutch prime ministers, he added that these individuals were picked from a list compiled by jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Image source, EPA

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been speaking at a press conference alongside Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau and Dutch premier Mark Rutte.

He says the United Kingdom will give £175m of aid to Ukraine, saying it takes the UK's total commitment to nearly £400 million.

Image source, Getty Images

Britain's ambassador to Ukraine has left the country because of the "serious security situation", Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says.

Earlier in the invasion Ambassador Melinda Simmons and a reduced embassy staff moved from the capital Kyiv to Lviv in western Ukraine, where the threat was considered less acute.

Giving evidence to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Truss said all UK diplomatic missions in the country have now closed.

Image source, PA Media

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says the West "didn't act early enough or decisively enough" in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's build-up of troops on the border with Ukraine.

"The reality is President Putin did not take the threats of deterrence seriously enough," she told MPs.

With the invasion of Ukraine, Truss said Russia had "shattered the security architecture of Europe".

"What we have to do now is we have to strengthen Nato, we particularly have to strengthen the eastern flank," she told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday.

"We have already deployed more troops into Estonia, but there is more to do. We have to be serious about defence spending, right across Nato."

As a third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine begins, the Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak urges Russia to halt attacks on civilians.

In a tweet, he says: "In a few minutes, we will start talking to representatives of a country that seriously believes large-scale violence against civilians is an argument. Prove that this is not the case."

It's being reported by local news agencies that the Ukraine delegation has arrived in Belarus for the third round of talks - after two previous sittings failed to make any progress toward peace.

It is understood the focus of the talks will once again be humanitarian corridors - to allow Ukrainian civilians to escape from military action as heavy Russian shelling of city centres continues in the south and the east of the country.

A previous attempt to establish humanitarian corridors on Saturday collapsed when the ceasefire failed to hold.

Overnight on Sunday, a new proposal from Russia was branded "unacceptable" by Ukraine's deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, after it became clear that people fleeing Kyiv would be offered safe passage to Russia's ally Belarus, while those in Kharkiv will have a corridor leading only to Russia itself.

Of the four cities mentioned, only the smaller ones - Mariupol and Sumy - have evacuation routes that lead to other parts of Ukraine. A spokesman for Ukraine's President Zelensky called it "a completely immoral story".

More than 1.7m Ukrainians have so far fled the war-torn country, as the invasion continues into its 12th day.

Image source, Getty Images

Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has taken to Telegram to call for peace "as soon as possible" in Ukraine.

Reacting to a TED talk by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he agreed with Harari that "we need peace".

Deripaska - who founded some of Russia's largest industrial companies - added that the "whole world will be different, and Russia will be different" following the conflict.

Image source, EPA

The mayor of Ukrainian town of Irpin, near Kyiv, says the evacuation of civilians are proceeding.

Oleksandr Markushyn told Ukrainian media that today’s evacuation was peaceful and about 1,000 people were taken to safety.

But Markushyn says Russian forces continue to shell Irpin. He says Ukrainian forces have repelled attacks by Russian forces who have pulled back to the edge of the town.

An advisor to the Interior Minister says other towns to the northwest including Bucha, Hostomel, and Vorzel, are now controlled by Russian forces and the situation remains critical.