Image source, Pool

Biden says the decision to ban Russian oil imports was taken "in close consultation" with allies.

Speaking at the White House, the president says he expects gas prices to rise following the move, but urges oil firms not to engage in "excessive" price hikes.

"There will be cost as well here in the United States," he says, but says that is the price to pay for "defending freedom".

Biden says Russian President Vladimir Putin "seems determined to continue on his murderous path, whatever the cost".

But he says Ukraine "will never be a victory for Putin".

Image source, Getty Images

President Biden has confirmed a complete US ban on Russian oil, gas and coal imports.

He says the move means the "American people will deal another powerful blow" to Putin's leadership.

"We will not be part of subsidising Putin's war," Biden adds.

Despite mounting fears of rising gas prices, the move has widespread bipartisan political support in the US.

Oil prices have been surging in anticipation of Biden's announcement - with the price of brent crude, the international benchmark, rising more than 5%, to $130 a barrel.

The US move is more immediate than in Europe, which is far more reliant on Russian oil and gas.

Read more here.

The UK government is to phase out Russian oil and oil products by the end of 2022.

This transition period will give the market, businesses and supply chains more than enough time to replace Russian imports – which make up 8% of UK demand, it said.

It echoes a similar proposal from Washington, where President Biden is set to announce a complete US ban on Russian oil, gas and coal imports.

The EU has also today made moves to reduce the continent's reliance on Russian gas, saying it aims to cut its demand by two thirds by the end of the year.

The UK is less reliant on Russian fossil fuels than many European countries. But Russian supplies still make up 8% of overrall imports into the UK, and 18% of UK diesel comes from Russia.

Gordon Corera
Security correspondent, BBC News

Russia has suffered between 2,000 and 4,000 casualties in Ukraine, the head of the US Defence Intelligence Agency has told a US Congressional hearing.

"They had a bad plan", Scott Berrier said, while estimating, with low confidence, the deaths based on intelligence and open source reporting.

The details follow earlier reports, from the Ukranian defence ministry, that a senior Russian military commander was killed in a battle on the edge of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

Sophie Williams
BBC News, in Krakow, Poland

Here in Krakow’s old town, less than 170 miles (274 kilometres) away from Poland’s border with Ukraine, Ukrainian flags and signs of support can be seen everywhere as people go about their day.

Just a five minute walk away in Krakow’s main station, huge numbers of Ukrainians who have fled the war are gathered at a designated area where they can receive help.

There are families with small children, dogs and cats. They’ve brought all the belongings they could escape with - many with just small backpacks and carrier bags.

They’re being assisted by people at the station, helping them contemplate their next move. Food and drink are also being handed around.

Other people wander around the station with signs or flags of onward destinations - from Norway to Spain and the Netherlands.

The mayor of the besieged city of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko, says the body of a six-year-old girl called Tanya was pulled from the rubble of a destroyed residential building. He says she had died from dehydration.

“Her mother was killed. We don’t know how long the girl was fighting for her life. We can’t imagine how much suffering she had to bear. In the last minutes of her life she was alone, weak, frightened, thirsty.”

The mayor says the story of the girl, also mentioned earlier today by President Volodymyr Zelensky in his address, was “one of many tragic stories of Mariupol, the city surviving in a blockade for the past eight days”.

Boychenko said: “Russian invaders have cynically left the city of half a million without water, light, heat and communications. All routes into the city are blocked. All efforts to deliver food and medicine to the residents of the city were blocked by the Russian army.”

He called on the West to do more to help Ukraine, including introducing a no-fly zone.

Boychenko added: “It will not bring back our Tanya, but will save the lives of thousands of other children in Ukraine.”

We're expecting the UK to announce a ban on Russian oil imports.

The government is expected to make an announcement later on Tuesday, in line with an expected US ban on Russian oil and gas imports.

The UK ban will be phased in over the coming months and will not cover Russian gas, according to reports in Politico and Bloomberg.

Jessica Parker
Brussels correspondent

Image source, AFP

The European Commission has proposed an outline of a plan to make Europe independent from Russian fossil fuels before 2030 - starting with gas.

The announcement comes after Russia earlier threatened to close its main gas pipeline to Germany if the West goes ahead with a ban on Russian oil.

This plan - a joint European action - also outlines a series of measures in response to rising energy prices in Europe, and to help replenish gas stocks for next winter.

Europe has been facing increased energy prices for several months, but now uncertainty on supply - in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine - is exacerbating the issue.

REPowerEU will seek to diversify gas supplies, speed up the roll-out of renewable gases and replace gas in heating and power generation.

The plan is intended to reduce EU demand for Russian gas by two-thirds before the end of the year.

Image source, Reuters

The weather has turned bitterly cold in Ukraine and neighbouring countries, making the journey for those fleeing the Russian invasion "incredibly harsh", says Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,

Speaking from Warsaw, she told BBC News that "tired and traumatised" women and children were queuing for up to 24 hours as they waited to cross into Poland.

She said many children were travelling with neighbours or distant relatives, or being left at the border by parents who then turned back.

"People are looking shell-shocked, they are looking completely lost - and they will need a great deal of support."

But she praised the government and people of Poland for the "most well-organised and well-supported response" she had seen in her career at UNHCR.

"The outpouring of support is the only heart-warming thing I have seen in this crisis."

Frozen star Idina Menzel has tweeted a message of support to a young girl who sang the film's hit song, Let It Go, while sheltering in a basement in Ukraine.

The video, featuring a girl called Amelka, went viral after it was posted on Facebook, external by Ukrainian Marta Smekhova.

"We see you. We really see you," tweeted Menzel on Tuesday, alongside blue and yellow hearts, the Ukrainian flag's colours.

The song's composer Kristen Anderson-Lopez also posted a message addressed to the "Little Girl with the beautiful voice".

She wrote on Twitter, external: "My husband and I wrote this song as part of a story about healing a family in pain. The way you sing it is like a magic trick that spreads the light in your heart and heals everyone who hears it. Keep singing! We are listening!"

Josh Gad, who voiced Olaf the snowman in the film, added, external: "My heart is overwhelmed."

Sarah Rainsford
BBC Eastern Europe Correspondent, in Dnipro

The roads around Dnipro are strangely quiet.

A couple of days ago, heading north to Kharkiv, we passed a 6 km (3.7 miles) queue of cars moving south to safer ground, with scrawled signs in their windows announcing "people" onboard.

Today, barely anyone is on the move here. It feels like these areas of Ukraine have almost emptied, leaving the army to wait for advancing Russian troops.

There are billboards all along the main roads calling on Russian soldiers to "have a conscience", think of their own families, and lay down their arms.

Road signs have been rubbed out, in the hope they’ll get lost.

We do know many people have already left this region, close to front lines to the north, east and south.

Only yesterday we saw the queues in the snow outside Dnipro train station - families waiting for evacuation trains to carry them west.

But we also know many people are still trapped under fire. The attempt to evacuate civilians through a safe corridor from Sumy, very close to the Russian border, has already collapsed after just one convoy of vehicles got though.

Local officials say the route then came under Russian fire and the process was stopped.

Image source, Reuters

Russia is using the idea of humanitarian corridors "to constantly intimidate" civilians, Dr Hugo Slim, a humanitarian aid specialist has said.

Dr Slim says the Russians will be "playing with [humanitarian] corridors" - dangling the possibility of escape and then disrupting that process.

He tells BBC Radio 4's World at One that forces in Ukraine were likely to be aping the "submit or starve" strategy carried out by Syrians and Russians in Syria.

"The Russians will be trying to make it clear to civilians that their options are really limited, uncertain and precarious."

US President Joe Biden is expected to announce a ban on US imports of Russian oil later today.

The announcement is expected to come as the latest sanction in response to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

The White House said Biden is set to speak at 15:45 GMT to "announce actions to continue to hold Russia accountable for its unprovoked and unjustified war on Ukraine" .

Biden's administration has been under increasing pressure from US lawmakers to take this step.

Labour MP Diane Abbott has been speaking at the House of Commons today.

She says Home Secretary Priti Patel should address the "cruel and chaotic way" that Ukrainian refugees heading to the UK are being treated.

Abbott asked Foreign Secretary Liz Truss if she thought redirecting applicants to Paris and Brussels brought the UK into disrepute.

Truss replied that Britain had staff in Poland and Hungary, and also now in Lille in France to help, as well as an office in Westminster for MPs to take any cases.

Meanwhile the mayor of Calais has criticised the UK's response to the refugee crisis.

Natacha Bouchart said the British "are not making it easy. They could take the identity of these people and deal with their situation there, once they arrive in England".

Abdujalil Abdurasulov
BBC News, Kyiv

Image source, Reuters

The buses with evacuees from the northeastern city of Sumy are now on the road and heading to the central city of Poltava, the Ukrainian authorities say. Their movement was briefly stopped because of shooting when they were crossing the Ukrainian checkpoint.

Russian military vehicles showed up at that moment and opened sporadic fire but it was not aimed at the buses, the head of Sumy administration Dmytro Zhyvytskiy said. The Russian column of armoured vehicles quickly left the area, he added.

It is not clear whether anyone was hurt.

In Sumy, however, people are struggling to get to the meeting point for evacuations - it's on the outskirts of the city.

The BBC spoke to Andrey, who lives in the centre, has two children, and no means of transportation.

In a desperate attempt, he is going to cycle with his kids to reach the area where some buses are still waiting to evacuate people.

He is worried that he is running out of time before the ceasefire ends tonight.

Image source, Reuters

It's been reported that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has spoken with the Vatican.

Lavrov apparently laid out Russia's position on Ukraine and expressed hope for another round of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, to "seek agreement on the key problems underlying the crisis in order to stop hostilities", Russia's foreign ministry reports.

On Sunday the Pope said the war was leading to "death, destruction and misery" when he addressed crowds in St Peter's Square.

Meanwhile, Lavrov is due to meet his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba for talks in Turkey on Thursday.

Image source, Reuters

Russia is trying to recruit Syrian mercenaries to fight in Ukraine, a senior US defence official has said.

"We find that noteworthy that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] believes that he needs to rely on foreign fighters to supplement what is a very significant commitment of combat power inside Ukraine as it is," the official told reporters, external.

Russia launched a military campaign in support of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in 2015 that has been crucial in turning the tide of the country's civil war in the government's favour.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal cited US officials as saying the Russian military had in recent days been recruiting fighters from Syria, external, "hoping their expertise in urban combat can help take Kyiv".

The Syrian activist-run Deir Ezzor 24 news network reported last month Russia was offering Syrians in government-controlled areas salaries of between $200 (£152) and $300 (£229) to "go to Ukraine and operate as guards" for six months, external.

The senior US defence official said they were unable to provide an estimate on the number of Syrians who had been recruited already or whether a quota had been set.

Image source, Reuters

Russia has threatened to close its main gas pipeline to Germany.

Europe relies on Russia for about 40% of its gas - so what happens if that supply is cut off?

Industry expert Tom Marzec-Manser says the immediate impact would be "incredibly high prices".

But he argues Russia would not be able to supply that same gas to another market, such as China, given the nature of the pipeline system - so it "would be detrimental to its own revenues" too.

"The real problem... is the options for extra gas [supplies] into Europe are really very few," says Marzec-Manser, head of gas analytics at ICIS.

He told the BBC that gas exporters such as Algeria and Norway are at capacity - so it would require global economies "such as China, Japan and Korea" to agree to take less liquified natural gas (LNG), in order to give extra supplies to Europe - "and even then, that wouldn't solve the problem completely".

You can read more about what the effect of Russian gas and oil sanctions might be here.

Clive Myrie
BBC News

I didn't really see her face, but at her feet were several cooing pigeons. Every now and again, a shower of birdseed would tumble from her hand.

She was wearing a heavy-looking grey coat, keeping out the late morning winter chill. I motioned to my colleague, cameraman David McIlveen, to try to take her picture - but she sensed he was approaching, emptied the brown paper bag of birdseed and briskly walked away.

It was the first time in 48 hours that I had left our lodgings - a basement car park in the heart of Kyiv which had become a makeshift bomb shelter.

A weekend-long curfew had been imposed after Russian troops had invaded the country. There was a real fear foreign saboteurs were moving among the population, and anyone caught outdoors would have been arrested.

You could see the nervousness on the faces of the soldiers and partisans manning checkpoints, despite the black balaclavas shielding them from the cold.

Their eyes told stories of apprehension, concern, worry and existential threat. Russian spies might be plotting routes for incoming troops, or smuggling weapons into the Ukrainian capital, or simply there to somehow sow seeds of discord among ordinary people to break local unity.

Read more from Clive Myrie here.

Image source, Ukraine Ministry of Internal Affairs/Handout via REUTERS

If you are just joining us or are in need of a recap, here is some of the latest news on day 13 of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

• More than two million people have now fled Ukraine as refugees, the UN says
• People have been leaving the cities of Irpin, near Kyiv, and Sumy - where an air strike killed 21 people on Monday according to officials - via evacuation routes which had been agreed between the two sides
• But Ukrainian officials say Russia is shelling an evacuation route from the besieged southern city of Mariupol
• Russia has threatened to cut off European gas supplies in response to sanctions from the West
• Oil giant Shell has apologised for buying a shipment of crude oil last week and promised to stop purchases from Russia
• Later, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to address British MPs in Parliament via a video link
• UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has ruled out a no-fly zone over Ukraine, but has said the UK will supply more "lethal and non-lethal aid"