Lyse Doucet
Chief International Correspondent

In Ukraine, 8 March - International Women’s Day - is the 13th day of Russia’s invasion.

Elderly women, bent with age and illness, step cautiously across a rickety plank of a bridge in Irpin, fleeing Russia’s incessant shelling.

Women give birth in basement bunkers and bomb shelters across the country.

Ukrainians are marking what is always an important day in their calendar with everyday acts of courage - even as millions of women and young girls are on the run, under fire, or trapped in their homes under ferocious bombardment and fast dwindling supplies.

My colleague Orla Guerin met young Olga last week, a volunteer teaching first aid to other volunteers who’ve signed up to fight with Ukraine’s Territorial Defence. The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford met women in Dnipro stuffing bottles to make Molotov cocktails.

In a Kyiv basement, Diana works night and day to help provide for people, and tells me she always wears red to keep up her spirits.

Flowers and chocolates are the usual gifts of this day.

MP Lesia Vasylenko tweets that she received a small sweet this year, instead of a big bouquet of flowers; she describes it as the “biggest and sweetest gift” of her life.

Even as war shreds so much, Ukrainians hold on to what’s left of the lives they once knew.

We're trying to piece together a picture of what's happening with evacuations in Ukrainian towns and cities today. Here's what we know so far:

Mariupol

Both the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's spokesman Oleg Nikolenko, and the Ukrainian Defence Ministry have accused Russian forces of shelling the humanitarian corridor out of the key southern city.

Eight lorries and 30 buses are on their way to deliver humanitarian aid to the city and to evacuate civilians to Zaporizhzhya, Nikolenko said, but we don't know if those lorries will be able to go in.

It is unclear if anyone has been able to leave.

Sumy

An evacuation column from the besieged city of Sumy has arrived in Poltava region - further away from the Russian border - the Poltava regional administration says.

The corridor is scheduled to be open until 19:00 GMT today.

Bucha

Russian forces are sabotaging an evacuation effort from Bucha District in Kyiv region, the head of the Kyiv regional administration, Oleksiy Kuleba, says.

"The district is preparing for mass evacuation of people and humanitarian aid supply. A ceasefire is necessary for this," Kuleba said.

He said people had been able to leave the nearby town of Irpin over the past 24 hours.

Reality Check

There are about 600 Ukrainian refugees in Calais, and some say they have been turned back by UK Border Force officials for not having the right paperwork.

Up until now people in Calais have been told to go to Paris to apply for their visa.

But on Monday, Home Secretary Priti Patel told MPs: “I confirm that we have set up a bespoke VAC (Visa Application Centre) en route to Calais but away from the port."

When we asked the Home Office for more details, they told us: “We are in the process of establishing a second Visa Application Centre in France which will be by referral from Border Force only to support Ukrainians. The primary Visa Application Centre in France will remain in Paris.”

They did not specify where the new centre was.

The government’s website, which provides guidance on how to apply for the UK’s Ukraine family visa scheme, external, currently only mentions the Paris centre.

BBC Home Editor Mark Easton reported from Calais yesterday that a Border Force official advised one family to go to the old port building in Calais where “the Home Office representation amounted to three men at a table in a deserted departure hall with bags of ready salted crisps and chocolate bars”.

Read more here

Image source, Slovak Interior Ministry

A boy has arrived safely in Slovakia after travelling some 1,200km (750 miles) from eastern Ukraine with no more than two small bags, a passport and his relatives' phone number.

Hassan, 11, left his home in Zaporizhzhia because his mother could not leave her elderly mother.

She put him on a train, and when he finally got to the border he was helped across by customs officers.

Officials said he was a true hero and had won over everyone with his smile.

The boy arrived at the border carrying a plastic bag, a small red backpack and his passport. He was taken in by volunteers who gave him food and a drink while border officials got in touch with relatives in the Slovak capital Bratislava.

His mother, in a video posted by Slovak police, thanked everyone for taking care of her son and explained why he had travelled across the country when it was in the grip of a Russian invasion.

"Next to my town is a power plant that the Russians are shelling. I couldn't leave my mum - she can't move by herself - so I sent my son to Slovakia," Julia Pisecka said.

Image source, Reuters

According to the latest UN figures, there have been 1,207 civilian casualties since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February.

That number includes including 406 people killed and 801 injured - but figures "are likely to be much higher" says Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Most injuries are the result of "airstrikes and explosive weapons", says the UN, with "hundreds of residential buildings" destroyed in cities across Ukraine.

One journalist is reported to have been killed.

The UN has also expressed concern about the "arbitrary detention" of pro-Ukrainian supporters in areas under Russian millitary control - as well as violence against those considered to be pro-Russian in Ukrainian government-controlled territories.

Latest UN figures suggest some 12,700 people have been arrested in Russia for holding peaceful anti-war protests.

The organisation criticised Russia's recently imposed "repressive laws" that impose jail sentences of up to 15 years on those charged with spreading so-called "false" information about the invasion, or discrediting the Russian armed forces.

In recent days Ukraine has seen snowfall across parts of the country, and as our chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet tweeted earlier, more is falling.

BBC weather presenter Ian Ferguson has provided more details, external on the cold snap, saying it's due to turn even colder from midweek.

Cities like Kharkiv and Kyiv will experience "biting windchill" of -13C to -20C at times during the next few days.

He says the "awful" conditions, with temperatures 5C or more below the seasonal average, will affect displaced people across Ukraine and those without adequate shelter and power.

Image source, Getty Images

Chinese President Xi Jinping has described the situation in Ukraine as worrying and called for "maximum restraint".

He made the comments during a virtual meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reports.

Xi said the priority should be preventing the situation in Ukraine from spinning out of control, and said the three countries should jointly support peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

China and Russia currently enjoy a close diplomatic relationship and Beijing has neither condemned nor condoned the action against Ukraine. However China did abstain from a UN Security Council vote condemning the invasion.

Read more analysis on China's stance here.

Image source, Samuel Otunla

Nigerian veterinary student Samuel Otunla has, like hundreds of other international students, been stuck in the north-east Ukrainian city of Sumy since the outbreak of the conflict.

Civilians have begun to flee Sumy today after Russia agreed to pause its bombardment.

Speaking to the BBC on Monday, Otunla said the past 10 days had been "nothing short of trauma".

He has been one of 60 international students, alongside Ukrainians and hostel staff, who have spent a week "in a dusty basement".

"We’ve been unable to leave. The railway has been closed, the main roads are [largely] inaccessible," he said.

"Throughout the past eight days, we’ve experienced trauma, sickness, stress and weariness - but, in the midst of all that, we also experienced friendship and love."

"We’ve shared meals, medications, blankets and mattresses with one another; we’ve played games together, prayed together and laughed together.

"But more than anything, we want to be evacuated together."

Image source, Getty Images

As we reported earlier on, the United Nations told the BBC that the number of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine is now over two million.

Refugees are crossing to neighbouring countries to the west, such as Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova.

A significantly smaller number of refugees have gone to Russia and Belarus.

The UN says that, external so far:

• Poland has welcomed over 1,204,000 refugees
• Hungary 191,000
• Slovakia 141,000
• Moldova 83,000
• Romania 82,000
• Russia 99,300
• Belarus 453

And the UN says more than183,000 people have moved on from these countries to others in Europe.

Find out more about the support these countries are providing here.

Image source, Reuters

Oil giant Shell says it is sorry for buying a shipment of Russian oil last week at knock-down prices.

"We are acutely aware that our decision last week to purchase a cargo of Russian crude oil to be refined into products like petrol and diesel - despite being made with security of supplies at the forefront of our thinking - was not the right one and we are sorry," chief executive Ben van Beurden says.

The business says it will immediately stop all spot purchases of Russian crude oil and will shut its service stations, aviation fuel and lubricants operations in Russia.

It says its withdrawal from other associations with Russia will be done "in a phased manner, aligned with new government guidance".

Several major international companies have pulled out of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

Fuel prices have shot up since the attack, with the average price for a litre of petrol at UK pumps hitting a record high of £1.56.

You can read more about how reliant the world is on Russian fuels here.

We're getting reports that Russian forces are shelling an evacuation route out of the besieged city of Mariupol.

Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said Russian forces were attacking the humanitarian corridor between the city and Zaporizhzhia, 225km (139 miles) to the north-east.

Eight trucks and 30 buses are on their way to deliver humanitarian aid to the city and to evacuate civilians to Zaporizhzhia, he said.

Civilians have been living there without running water or power for almost a week and food is running out.

Image source, EPA

Earlier, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said the first waves of refugees seen coming out of Ukraine were those with "some resources".

"Many come by car, and especially they have connections. They can go where they have family, friends, communities," he said.

But he warned that if the war continues, people with few resources and connections will be forced to flee.

"That will be a more complex issue for European countries to manage going forward and there will need to be even more solidarity by everybody in Europe and beyond," he is quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

He said the Balkan wars in Bosnia and Kosovo saw an exodus of "maybe two to three million people, but over a period of eight years".

While other parts of the world have seen similar movements, "in Europe, it's the first time since the Second World War".

The number of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine has passed two million, the UN has told the BBC.

Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, previously called the mass exodus from the country the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two.

Adam Easton
Warsaw Correspondent

The European Union’s offer of 500 million euros (£415m) in aid for countries helping Ukrainian refugees is insufficient, a Polish deputy foreign minister has said.

“This amount will certainly not be enough, especially as it is to be distributed among all countries,” Pawel Jablonski said in an interview with Polsat News.

Around 1.2 million people, 90% of them Ukrainian citizens, have fled Ukraine to Poland since the war began.

Jablonski said initial calculations estimate that the cost of hosting one million refugees will cost Poland up to 10 billion zlotys ($2.2 billion/2 billion euros) if education, healthcare and social insurance costs are taken into account.

“This is an estimate for a million people and we will have many more,” he added.

There has been an intensification of Russian accusations that Ukraine is developing nuclear or biological weapons since February, the UK's Ministry of Defence says.

The MoD says that while these are "long-standing narratives", they are likely being amplified "as part of a retrospective justification for Russia's invasion of Ukraine".

As we reported in an earlier post, Ukraine's military has accused Russia of resorting to psychological warfare, saying that groups of Russian forces have been conducting propaganda work in occupied territories to influence local residents.

Image source, EPA

People are also evacuating Irpin, a town to the west of Kyiv, which has seen heavy fighting in recent days.

The evacuation of the town's population through the village of Romanivka to the city of Kyiv continues, said the head of the region, Oleksiy Kuleba.

As of 9:30 (07:30 GMT) more than 150 people had been evacuated, he added.

"The aggressor is preventing the evacuation of the population. Within a day, those who were able to get to the gathering place were taken out of Irpin on their own. Now the district is preparing for a large-scale evacuation and delivery of humanitarian aid."

An analysis by Human Rights Watch (HRW) of Sunday's Irpin attack suggests the laws of war were violated by Russia during the shelling of the town, west of Kyiv.

For several hours on 6 March 2022, Russian forces bombarded an intersection on a road that hundreds of civilians were using to flee the Russian army’s advance in northern Ukraine to Kyiv, Human Rights Watch said.

"The repeated nature of the attacks, which according to the government killed at least eight civilians, suggests that Russian forces violated their obligations under international humanitarian law not to conduct indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks that harm civilians, and failed to take all feasible measures to avoid civilian casualties."

Read more of HRW's analysis here, external.

Adam Easton
Warsaw Correspondent

Image source, ep

According to the Polish Border Guard agency, 1.2 million people have fled from Ukraine to Poland since the war began.

On Monday alone, 141,500 people crossed the frontier, the agency wrote on Twitter - just under Sunday’s daily record of 142,300.

About 90% of the people fleeing are Ukrainian citizens, mostly women and children. One academic estimates about 40% of refugees have already left Poland for other countries.

Poland was already home to many Ukrainians - estimates range between one and two million people - and a lot have come to stay with family or friends here.

Thousands of Poles are hosting refugees in their own homes too, and today Poland's parliament will debate emergency legislation to compensate those who do for their additional costs.

The legislation would also allow Ukrainians to live and work in Poland for 18 months and receive free healthcare and schooling.

Last night, the Ukrainian president posted another one of his daily videos. But this time it came from his presidential office in Kyiv.

He wasn't hiding. And he wasn't afraid, he said.

Zelensky disclosing his exact location so publicly was viewed as a dig at Vladimir Putin - Kyiv remains strongly defended by Ukraine forces in the face of Russia's main military assault.

More now from Ben Wallace.

On the subject of refugees, the UK defence secretary acknowledged the UK needed to do more to address the situation of Ukrainians arriving in Calais, some of whom have been told they need to travel back to Paris or Brussels to apply for a visa.

"We need to do more," he said. "We need to upscale it. I know that the home secretary has already doubled, or trebled in some cases, more people in different processing centres."

He said the government's compassion was "huge" and would result in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians coming to the UK.

"It's not the case that we are only allowing 300 people in, it is the case that the system has not been quick enough, which is what we're going to address."

Image source, EPA