Lyse Doucet
Chief International Correspondent, Kyiv

Around Ukraine, in all corners of this country, Ukrainians are being wakened, before first light, by air-raid sirens.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now calling it a war of annihilation. And when you see the images from one town and city after another it doesn’t seem much of an exaggeration.

This morning we hear of Mykolaiv, in the south-west, on the way to the southern city of Odesa – it’s under intense bombardment.

We hear about Melitopol, also in the south. It was one of the first towns to fall to the Russians. The report this morning is that the mayor, Ivan Fedorov, who was defiant when the Russians came in saying “I will not give up”, was taken away from his office by the Russians, a bag on his head.

Mariupol – there people are freezing, starving, dying, melting snow to drink, chopping wood to cook and people are being buried in mass graves.

It’s not just the south. Chernihiv in the north – before the war a city of 300,000 people – has been under a constant barrage of shelling, aerial bombardment and there too heating, gas, electricity and water supplies are cut.

Seventeen days and this is the situation across Ukraine.

People often compare it to Syria – we saw this situation in Syria after several years of war and this is Ukraine now in its third week.

Image source, Reuters

Former deputy Secretary General of Nato Rose Gottemoeller tells the BBC she is "sceptical" Russian forces will "gain much success" in an assault on Ukraine's capital city Kyiv.

A massive convoy of Russian forces massed outside the city is believed to have dispersed, in preparation for an advance. But Gottemoeller says she thinks this could be taken as a sign of weakness.

"I'm wondering if they have the ability to regroup at this point, because their logistics are in such bad shape, they don't really have the fuel supplies they need for a push on to Kyiv," she tells BBC Radio 4's Today Programme.

Gottemoeller also says reports fighters from Syria could be recruited to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine shows the "barbaric approach to this invasion" taken by Moscow.

Russia says there are 16,000 volunteers in the Middle East ready to fight - and the US believes these could include Syrians skilled in urban combat.

"They are extremist groups - they are people that have been fighting in Syria, they are some of the most violent extremists that have been encountered in warfare," Gottemoeller says.

Lyse Doucet
Chief International Correspondent, Kyiv

The pace of the war in the capital, Kyiv, is measured in miles these last 17 days.

We’ve just head from the Ministry of Defence in the UK saying that it believes the bulk of the Russian forces are now as close as 15 miles from the centre of Kyiv.

But even as we get these reports of the Russians advancing, from the north-west, from the north-east, they’re coming under Ukrainian fire - using infantry using anti-tank weapons supplied by the West, using drones.

As always for defenders, they are reliant and benefitting from intelligence from a very patriotic local population.

But we also hear that the Russians are stymied by their own problems – logistical difficulties, shortages of supplies.

We should point out that while the bulk of the forces is only 15 miles away, some are even closer.

We’ve been reporting about what’s been happening in the town of Brovary, eight miles from the centre of Kyiv.

Brovary is Ukrainian for “breweries”. It used to be famous for special beers and its pretty parks. Now it’s famous for images of the Ukrainian military using heavy artillery to repel a Russian armoured column.

That is the scene all around the capital, particularly the north-west and north-east - intense fighting over the control of the small towns, the gateways to the city.

And what do they leave in their wake? Large swathes of neighbourhoods are blackened wastelands.

We've been hearing about the measures Ukrainian cities have been taking to defend their territory and their people from Russian bombardment.

But in Lviv, in Western Ukraine, there are also considerations around the treasures in its Unesco heritage-listed city centre.

In one room of the National Museum of Lviv, an enormous scaffold is bare. In another, brackets hang loosely from the walls.

As Russian shelling has devastated other parts of Ukraine, the picturesque western city of Lviv has been left untouched, so far. But it is bracing for war.

In Lviv's galleries, museums and churches, a huge operation is under way to safeguard the city's cultural heritage. Thousands of artworks and artefacts have been carefully removed and taken to secret underground locations, or down to basement storage rooms.

Ihor Kozhan, the director of the National Museum of Lviv - the largest art museum in Ukraine - took the BBC on a tour of its now empty rooms, which looked as though they had been looted.

Nearly every one of the 1,500 artefacts on display has now been removed from the museum.

"Everything, everything is gone," Kozhan said.

Read more:

Under threat of Russian bombs, Lviv hides away its priceless heritage

Image source, Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron has reportedly criticised the UK government for failing to live up to its "grand statements" on helping Ukrainian refugees.

Speaking at the end an EU summit in Versailles, Macron criticised the UK's visa policy which requires applicants to make them in person in either Brussels or Paris, the Guardian reports, external.

"Despite all the grand statements... the British government continued to apply current rules that meant they did not welcome Ukrainian refugees who wanted to reach British soil saying they have to travel hundreds of kilometres in order to apply for a visa," it reports him as saying.

"I would hope that the Ukrainian men and women who have lived through horror and crossed Europe to reach their families on UK territory will be better treated."

The UK Home Office pointed to previous comments from Home Secretary Priti Patel that the UK was "now making the process quicker and simpler" for taking in Ukrainians, the paper says.

Image source, Reuters

The battle for Ukraine's capital Kyiv could be Russia's new Stalingrad, a Ukrainian MP tells the BBC.

Sviatoslav Yurah, Ukraine's youngest ever MP and a former adviser to President Zelensky, is helping with the volunteer defence in Kyiv.

He tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme the capital has been facing a "barrage" of rockets overnight and there are ongoing battles on the outskirts of the city.

But he warns Russia should prepare for heavy losses should it advance on the city.

"It's a massive town of millions and if the Russians try to come in they will have quite a fight on their hands - this will be their Stalingrad if they want to make it so," he says, referring to the bloodiest battle of World War Two, in which about 1.1m Soviet troops and 800,000 Nazi German and Romanian troops died.

The 1942-43 battle was a turning-point, halting the Nazi advance in Russia.

"Nobody is going to surrender - I can definitely guarantee you that," he says.

He says he has been co-ordinating bringing in supplies, including sacks of sand, as well as talking with various army units to conduct the forthcoming battle "effectively".

The city remains at the crosshairs of Russian troops poised to mount an assault on the Ukrainian capital.

Read more from Jeremy Bowen about Kyiv's preparations.

Adam Easton
Warsaw Correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

Close to 1.6 million people (1.596 million) have fled Ukraine to Poland since the war began, the Polish Border Guard agency said on Saturday.

Not all of those refugees are thought to be currently in Poland. Maciek Duszczyk, the vice-rector for research at Warsaw University estimates about one million refugees remain in Poland, and the rest have already left for other countries.

The number of people crossing the frontier fell on Friday, down 12.5% from Thursday to 76,200, the Border Guard agency wrote on Twitter.

By 06:00 GMT on Saturday itself, 17,700 people had crossed, down from 25,400 during the same period on Friday.

Many of the refugees have gone to large cities in search of better employment prospects and services. Local authorities in Warsaw and Krakow say they have reached the limits of their ability to absorb the number of people without extra resources coming in.

On Friday, Warsaw’s mayor, Rafal Trzaskowski said 320,000 people fleeing the war in Ukraine had passed through the city, and about 230,000 remained, that’s equivalent to 10% of Warsaw’s population.

He said 95% of arrivals in the beginning went to stay with family or friends, but that proportion has dropped to about 70%.

BBC Monitoring
The world through its media

Russian troops shelled a regional oncology hospital in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, the head of the city's Regional Health Authority, Maksym Beznosenko, has said on Facebook.

"Only a creep can attack the weak. Those weak are our patients. Just now, these monsters shelled the oncology hospital. A hospital that provides care to cancer patients from all over Mykolaiv Region," he said in an 11 March post.

"If hating the enemy unites - we are already the most united nation in the world. If Russia sees cancer patients as an equal adversary who is a threat - it is not just sick, it is already in agony. And that is the only thing that can cheer us up in such circumstances," he added.

According to Beznosenko, the shelling did not cause significant damage. "We keep on working," he said.

In its latest intelligence update, the UK's Ministry of Defence says the "bulk" of Russian forces are now 25km (15 miles) from Kyiv's city centre.

It says the large Russian column north of the capital has dispersed - "likely to support a Russian attempt to encircle the city".

"It could also be an attempt by Russia to reduce its vulnerability to Ukrainian counter-attacks, which have taken a significant toll on Russian forces," the MoD says.

Elsewhere, the cities of Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Sumy are encircled and facing heavy shelling, it adds.

As we reported earlier, humanitarian corridors have been agreed for the embattled northeastern city of Sumy on Saturday morning, said Sumy Regional Military Administration Dmitry Zhyvytsky in a post on Telegram.

According to Zhyvytsky, evacuation efforts starting at 09:00 local time (07:00 GMT) will see vehicles departing from six destinations around the region.

All of the convoys are headed to the central city of Poltava, and are expected to arrive between 13:00 to 14:00.

The scale of the destruction in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol has been revealed in a series of photos and satellite images.

Residential areas have been flattened, a shopping centre destroyed and a maternity hospital attacked. The southern port city has used at least one mass grave to bury the dead.

Image source, Yandex/Sergei Orlov

Mariupol, a city of about 400,000, has been subjected to days of heavy bombardment.

Its people are running dangerously short of food and water, the city's deputy mayor Sergei Orlov, says, and there is "no electricity, no water supply, no heating, no sanitary system".

Image source, Maxar

People are being forced to melt snow to drink, and chop wood to cook and keep warm in sub-zero temperatures, he says.

Mariupol is a key strategic target for Russia. Seizing it would allow Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine to join forces with troops in Crimea - the southern peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Read more about the situation here.

Under fire and out of supplies, the situation in the besieged northern city of Chernihiv is getting worse every day, BBC News Ukraine reports.

As it faces a constant barrage of shelling and aerial bombardment, supplies gas, heat and even water have been cut.

And the stocks people have amassed will soon run out. Electricity is available in only a few areas, and most of the city is without light and communication.

The city - which had a pre-war population of roughly 300,000 - is surrounded by Russian forces and has sustained heavy damage.

A frozen food storage warehouse in the region of Kyiv caught fire on Saturday as a result of shelling, according to a post by Ukraine's State Emergency Services (SES).

The shelling had taken place at 3.40 AM (01:40 GMT) on Saturday morning, they said.

Images published by the SES showed emergency workers racing to extinguish a massive blaze at what appeared to be a single-story warehouse, as towering plumes of smoke rose from the flames.

The SES said the fire had been localised as of 07:54 and that firefighters were still working to put out the flames.

No casualties have been reported so far.

Image source, SES

Explosions were heard early on Saturday in the cities of Nikolaev, Dnipro and Kropyvnytskyi, according to BBC Ukraine quoting local authorities.

According to a Telegram channel run by local authorities, external, Dnipro's air defence system was successfully activated.

it is not clear how many explosions struck Dnipro, but authorities added that they were waiting to officially hear back from the military.

If you're just joining us this Saturday morning, welcome to our live page coverage. This morning, we heard reports of air sirens ringing out across various cities in Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv.

Here's what else you need to know to get you up to speed:

• Ukraine has once again accused Russia of preventing the evacuation of people from the southern port city of Mariupol

• Conditions in the besieged city are reportedly becoming increasingly desperate, as people are said to be enduring freezing temperatures with no power, and diminishing food and water supplies

• More humanitarian corridors have been agreed for the embattled north-eastern city of Sumy on Saturday morning, said a local official
• In his latest video address, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky made an impassioned plea to Russian mothers of conscripts not to send their children into war

• US President Joe Biden restates his country will not directly intervene militarily against Russia in Ukraine, but would expand the list of Russian oligarchs subject to economic sanctions
• Russia makes unsubstantiated claims of US biological weapons activities in Ukraine at a UN Security Council meeting
• Ukraine suggests Belarus could join Russia's invasion in the coming hours

Ukrainian president Vlodymyr Zelensky appealed to Russian mothers in his latest video address on Friday, urging them not to send them to the battlefield and to exercise vigilance on their whereabouts.

In an impassioned plea, he said "I want to say this once again to Russian mothers, especially mothers of conscripts. Do not send your children to war in a foreign country."

He called on them not to "believe the promises that they will be sent somewhere for exercises .. or non-combat conditions," and urged them to "act immediately" if there were any suspicions they were being sent to fight in Ukraine.

The address comes as Russia acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday the presence of conscripts in the ranks of its forces in Ukraine - many of whom were untrained for battle - and announced that a number of them had been taken prisoner.

The Ukrainian government says that Russian attacks have prevented people from escaping the southern port city of Mariupol again.

Conditions in the city are becoming increasingly desperate.

The authorities have said that more than 1,500 people have been killed in Mariupol and those who are left face freezing temperatures.

The city currently experiences limited to no power, and little food and water.

In his latest video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned Russia for trapping people in the city and refusing to allow the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid.

Zelensky added that fewer evacuations had taken place from four key cities in recent days because of the constant barrage of Russian artillery

Reality Check

Image source, Getty Images

Posts expressing partisan views have been removed on a daily basis - both for and against Russian military action.

"No-one dares to stand with Ukraine right now," wrote one person on Weibo, China's Twitter equivalent. "It's all one-sided support for Russia."

This was removed along with many others like it, according to Free Weibo, a platform which tracks Chinese censorship online.

Social-media platforms in China receive constant guidance from the government on how to deal with specific content and are under pressure to follow this.

Official and mainstream media carry regular reports on the situation in Ukraine but have stopped short of calling Russia's actions a "war" or "invasion".

Doublethink Lab, which has been tracking disinformation attempts in real time, has pointed out the Chinese media are "regularly quoting disinformation and conspiracy theories from Russian sources".

False claims, such as that the Ukrainians set fire to their own nuclear plant, are repeated by Chinese media with little attempt to challenge them.

There is also very little reporting on the resistance from the Ukraine side nor the wider Western response to Russia's invasion.

Read more:

How China is censoring online discussion of the war

Frank Gardner
BBC Security Correspondent

This war is going badly for both sides. Ukraine’s cities are being pummeled by Russian shellfire, while Moscow’s army is still making only slow progress, hampered by the strength of Ukrainian resistance and its own poor logistics and tactical decisions.

Russia has now lost a third Major-General - a sign, say defence analysts, of the risks they’re having to take to keep their troops moving forward.

President Putin has backed moves to recruit from the Middle East to fight alongside Russian-backed forces.

A senior US official has previously accused Moscow of trying to enlist fighters from Syria – a country whose leader relied on support from the Kremlin during its civil war.

There is also a real prospect of Chechen fighters being amongst the assaulting troops.

Russia fought two wars in Chechnya to prevent it breaking away, but today Chechen soldiers are loyal to Moscow and have a fearsome reputation.

Meanwhile, the giant armoured convoy that has sat for days north of Kyiv has now moved closer to the capital.

Russian forces are attempting to close in on the city in a pincer movement. Ukrainians say they are ready to defend it.

The Institute for the Study of War , externalsaid Russian operations around Kyiv "remained largely stalled over the past 24 hours" to "resupply and refit frontline units".

But the institute added: "Uncoordinated and sporadic Russian offensive operations against major Ukrainian cities support the Ukrainian General Staff’s assessment that Russian forces face growing morale and supply issues and have lost the initiative."

It shared a map on Twitter (below) that shows Russia advancing towards the west of Ukraine.

In addition to this, the institute said President Putin "is reportedly conducting an internal purge of general offers and intelligence personnel" in an attempt to recalibrate Russia's war effort "to sustain combat operations far longer than the Kremlin initially planned".