Image source, Reuters

As we reported earlier on, the British Army has confirmed that a small number of its soldiers may have disobeyed orders and travelled to Ukraine to fight.

The head of the British armed forces has previously said Britons should not head to Ukraine to fight - and should instead help in other ways from the UK.

Last week serving soldiers were warned that heading to Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion risked giving "the mistaken perception" to Russia that Britain had sent in troops to fight.

Hundreds of former British soldiers, who have completed their time in the armed services, have said they want to go to Ukraine to fight or help with medical or humanitarian efforts.

Many have told the BBC they're getting mixed messages from the government about whether they should go.

Read more here

Image source, Getty Images

A top Holy See official has condemned the reported bombing of a children's and maternity hospital in Mariupol as "unacceptable".

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's Secretary of State, told reporters: "I say bombing a hospital is unacceptable. There are no reasons, there are no motivations, to do this."

The Vatican has offered itself up as an intermediary in Russia's war on Ukraine.

Reuters reports that Pope Francis broke with diplomatic protocol last Friday and paid a visit to the local Russian embassy to relay his concerns about the invasion.

A small number of British soldiers have disobeyed orders and may have travelled to Ukraine to fight, the British Army has confirmed.

The soldiers were absent without leave and may have gone to Ukraine "in a personal capacity", the Army said.

"We are actively and strongly encouraging them to return to the UK," a spokesperson added.

All service personnel are banned from travelling to Ukraine until further notice.

Gordon Corera
Security correspondent, BBC News

Image source, SOPA Images/Getty Images

Western officials say they are "very concerned" about the risk of escalation in the war between Russia and Ukraine.

They are particularly concerned about the possibility of Russia using non-conventional weapons, they say - which most likely refers to chemical weapons although the term also covers tactical (small-scale) nuclear weapons, biological weapons and dirty bombs.

"We've got good reason to be concerned," said one Western official.

They said this was partly because of what had been seen in other places where Russia has been engaged in conflict, notably Syria where chemical weapons were used by its allies.

Read the full piece here.

The UN human rights office says it’s verified 1,424 civilian casualties since the invasion of Ukraine began two weeks ago.

516 people have been killed and 908 injured - but the UN human rights office says it believes the real figures are "considerably higher".

It says most casualties were caused by explosive weapons including shelling and missile and air strikes.

It adds updated figures from the towns of Volnovakha, Mariupol and Izium are still being corroborated following allegations of hundreds of civilian casualties.

Russia has denied targeting civilians in its invasion of Ukraine.

Image source, Getty Images

The EU has announced fresh sanctions against another 160 Russian citizens in the latest round of punishments targeting supporters of President Vladimir Putin's regime.

The measures will see 14 oligarchs and businessmen hit with sanctions, as well as 146 members of the Russian Russian Federation Council, or Senate, who supported the recognition of separatist regions in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian citizens sanctioned include:

• Alexander Vinokurov, who is married to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's daughter
• Dmitry Pumpyansky, chairman of the board of directors of the world's largest supplier of steel pipes for the oil and gas industry
• And Mikhail Poluboyarinov, CEO of the state airline Aeroflot

In total, some 862 Russian individuals and 53 entities have now been sanctioned by the bloc. A number of Belarusian institutions have also been targeted by the EU.

US Congressional leaders have reached a bipartisan deal to provide $13.6bn (£10.3bn) for Ukraine.

The funding will be attached to a broad government spending package expected to pass over the next couple of days.

The size of the Ukraine package is significantly higher than that which the White House had requested.

Roughly half of the money will go to humanitarian and economic aid, while the other half will aid the defence of Ukraine and neighbouring countries.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he has just spoken with the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to thank her for the support.

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has been speaking to the BBC from Kyiv, having returned from efforts to help evacuate civilians in Irpin, which is 20km north west of the captial.

He tells of the "disastrous humanitarian crisis" in Irpin, saying that people having been melting snow to drink water, and that there is no electricity, no heating, no food and no medicine.

Asked if he believed the Kremlin would honour the ceasefires in key cities and keep humanitarian corridors open, Poroshenko says when he was in power he had very "negative" experiences with Vladimir Putin, and warned the world not to trust the Russian president.

He urges the whole world to join the US-UK ban on Russian oil and the EU's move to end its reliance on Russian gas, saying it is "immoral" for countries to pay Putin money for killing Ukrainian citizens.

He insists it is "absolutely necessary to close the sky" with no-fly zones over nuclear power stations as nuclear contamination "has no borders".

Nato has so far ruled out placing a no-fly zone over Ukraine amid concerns it would draw the military alliance into war with Russia. But Poroshenko argues Nato is already involved in the conflict.

Ukrainians, he says, are fighting for freedom, democracy and for Nato by making Russia weaker and making Europe safer and "paying for [it] with the biggest price they can - their lives and their blood".

Sarah Smith
North America editor

Image source, Reuters

The UK and US don't want "direct conflict".

As UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken were meeting, Ukraine's President Zelensky tweeted another demand that they institute a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

After a direct strike by Russian troops on a children’s hospital in Mariupol, he asked how much longer the world will be an "accomplice ignoring terror", and repeated his demands that Nato close the skies and stop the killing.

During the joint press conference I asked how the UK and the US could explain to him there is no possibility of a no-fly zone in these circumstances?

Liz Truss says the attack is abhorrent but the best way to help protect the skies is through anti-air weaponry, which the UK is now going to be supplying to Ukraine.

Our goal is to end the war, not expand it replied Blinken. Flying American pilots into Ukrainian airspace would almost certainly lead to direct conflict between the US, Nato and Russia. That would prolong the conflict and make it deadlier than it already is, he said.

Which leaves Nato and its allies struggling to work out how to meet Ukraine's increasingly urgent appeals for military assistance.

This photo, supplied by Ukrainian police, appears to show a massive bomb crater just outside the children's and maternity hospital in Mariupol that was reportedly hit by a Russian air strike.

Image source, National Police of Ukraine/Reuters

The best way to protect Ukrainian skies is through "anti-air weaponry" which the UK is now supplying, Liz Truss has said.

The British foreign secretary was asked by the BBC's Sarah Smith about renewed calls for a no-fly zone by Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, after Wednesday's bombing of a children's and maternity hospital in Mariupol.

We've been updating you about a reported Russian strike on a children's and maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol.

The port city has been under Russian bombardment for days, and at least 1,170 civilians have been killed in in the city since the start of the invasion, the city's deputy mayor has said.

There are also reports now that the authorities have dug a mass grave because normal burials have become impossible.

"Sadly, there are just too many bodies," local official Vitaly Falkovsky tells the Financial Times. "It was a necessary measure because we can’t bury people in the normal way. The morgues are overflowing."

More than 60 people have been buried in the grave in the past two days, AP reports. They include civilians and soldiers killed by shelling, as well as civilians who died from disease and natural causes.

Streets in the southern port city are said to be lined with bodies, and people have run out of food.

Image source, Reuters

Video footage posted by the mayor of Mariupol shows the scale of the attack on the children's and maternity hospital.

This footage does contain upsetting scenes.

Image source, Pool

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says the attack on a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol is "absolutely abhorrent".

She is asked why Nato will not introduce a no-fly zone - something Ukraine's president has pleaded for.

Truss says the best way to help protect the skies is through anti-air weaponry, which the UK and its allies are providing.

Speaking at the press conference in Washington, she says the UK is seeking to fully exclude Russia from the Swift financial payment system, and also end the use of Russian oil and gas across the G7 group of wealthy nations.

"We must not rest until Putin fails in Ukraine and the country's sovereignty is restored," she says.

Image source, Pool

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss are speaking at a joint press conference in Washington after holding talks.

Blinken urges Russia to allow Ukrainians to leave cities facing "relentless bombardment" from Russian troops.

"Russia invaded Ukraine without justification," he says, and must respect humanitarian corridors that allow people to escape besieged cities.

Blinken also pays tribute to the compassion showed by British people to help people in Ukraine, drawing a comparison between the current conflict and Britain's struggles during World War Two.

He says it is impossible to see pictures of people seeking refuge in Kyiv and not to think of people sheltering in London's underground stations during bombing by Nazi Germany in 1942.

We're hearing that at least 17 people have been wounded by a Russian air strike on a hospital in Mariupol, according to the Ukrainian military administration in the eastern Donetsk region.

Members of staff and women in labour were among those wounded, officials said.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Ukrainian military administration in the Donetsk region, said the number of wounded children "is zero, thank God, and I hope it stays that way".

In response to the reported strike on a children's and maternity hospital in Mariupol, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says: "There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenceless."

He tweets that the UK, external is "exploring more support for Ukraine to defend against airstrikes".

Johnson says the UK government will hold Putin to account "for his terrible crimes".

The deputy mayor of Mariupol, Serhiy Orlov, has just spoken to the BBC World Service.

The city council says Russia has destroyed a children's and maternity hospital in the besieged southern port city.

Orlov says: "We don't understand how it is possible in modern life to bomb children's hospital."

He says people in Mariupol who managed to escape the hospital are in "total anger" and "cannot believe it is true".

As we have been reporting, Ukraine and Russia agreed to hold a 12-hour ceasefire in six cities in Ukraine to allow civilians to escape. Mariupol was one of the cities that would have been covered by the temporary ceasefire.

Image source, Reuters

We've been bringing you news from Mariupol - one of the Ukrainian cities hit worst by the fighting. In the last few hours, a maternity and children's hospital has reportedly been hit by a Russian strike.

Myhajlo Todurov - who used to live in Mariupol before moving to Slovenia two decades ago - says he has not heard from his family there for eight days.

Speaking before the hospital attack, Todurov says the situation in the city is a "huge catastrophe".

"Both my grandparents, my aunts and their families are there

"I managed to hear from some friends in Mariupol on Sunday but I have heard nothing since

"[People] say that there is no food, water, electricity or gas. People are making fires and cooking what little they have."

Ukrainian MP Dmytro Gurin has tweeted video of the Mariupol hospital that has reportedly been hit by a Russian strike.

Gurin said there was "no information about children and newborn yet".

In the video, the MP says: "Hospital No 3, Mariupol, maternity ward. People have been removed from under the rubble."