Former Ukraine footballer Andriy Shevchenko says he will take in refugee families at his Surrey home as he aims to support 150 Ukrainians in the UK.

The former Chelsea and AC Milan striker is also launching a programme with the World Food Programme to raise £1m for his home country.

He's told BBC Breakfast it was a "devastating time" for him, his family and all those in Ukraine at the moment.

He says he had a lot of friends who wanted to help provide accommodation including in student flats.

Shevchenko says he has spoken with the ambassador to Ukraine here and is hoping to host a couple of families at his home.

He adds his own family would probably stay in Ukraine, particularly as his mother has a health condition which made it difficult for her to leave Kyiv.

"This is a situation that hundreds and thousands of families in Ukraine are facing and we have to make a decision," he says.

He also thanked people in the UK and around the world for their support for Ukraine.

Image source, Gett

Emergency services in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv say at least 500 residents have been killed since Russia launched its invasion on 24 February.

The BBC cannot independently verify this figure.

Kharkiv is Ukraine's second largest city and has come under intense shelling over the past few weeks, although Russian forces have been struggling to encircle the city because of a shortage of ammunition.

Two people died when Russian shells hit multi-storey apartment blocks in the Nemyshlyansk district of the city, the emergency service said in its latest daily update, external.

The UN human rights watchdog has estimated at least 691 civilians have been killed so far, while another 1,143 people have been injured across Ukraine.

Adam Easton
Warsaw Correspondent

Image source, EPA

The Polish, Czech and Slovenian prime ministers are back in Poland after their visit to Kyiv, a Polish government spokesman says.

“The Polish, Slovenia and Czech delegations safely returned,” Piotr Muller writes on Twitter.

The leaders, accompanied by the head of Poland’s governing Law and Justice party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, travelled to Kyiv by train in a show of solidarity with Ukraine and were the first to visit the Ukrainian capital since the start of the war.

Earlier Liz Truss mentioned the first refugees under the UK's Homes for Ukraine scheme will arrive next week, but we now have an update on how many visas have been granted under the other scheme - which allows family members to join UK-based relatives.

Immigration minister Kevin Foster tells the Commons home affairs committee that 20,000 Ukrainians have applied to come to the UK, and so far 5,500 visas have been granted.

Image source, Getty Images

The head of Russia's foreign intelligence agency has said the country's fate will be decided in the coming days.

Sergei Naryshkin, who heads up the SVR, told a panel event in Moscow that Russia "is now experiencing a truly historic moment".

The fate of Russia is being decided, its future place in the world," Naryshkin said.

The spy chief's speech focused on the importance of sovereignty and he told delegates "sovereignty is a guarantee of the well-being and dignity of our citizens, this is the future of our children".

"In such matters, Russia has never retreated and will not retreat, because otherwise it will cease to be Russia".

Prior to the invasion of Ukraine Naryshkin was dressed down by President Vladimir Putin on state TV during a heavily choreographed national security meeting. Putin challenged the one-time KGB officer, who seemed to fluff his lines when invited to voice support for the recognition of separatist regions in Ukraine.

More now on reports that a 12-storey residential building in Kyiv was hit by Russian shelling early this morning.

Details on the number of people hurt in the attack are still emerging, but dozens of people were evacuated from the building.

Now emergency services in Ukraine's capital city have released footage showing the devastating impact of the attack. You can view the images below.

Warning: This footage contains some distressing scenes.

Image source, Getty Images

Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has told a meeting of delegates in Brussels the security bloc remains united in its support of Ukraine.

In the first meeting since Russia launched its invasion of its neighbour, Stoltenberg says Western leaders have provided massive amounts of military support to Kyiv and pledges to continue that support.

"The world is condemning this senseless war," Stoltenberg says. "Nato allies and partners are imposing unprecedented sanctions on Russia and we are united in our support to Ukraine."

"For many years we have trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops and provided large quantities of critical equipment to help Ukraine uphold its right to self-defence.

"Since the start of the Russian invasion allies have significantly stepped up our support for the brave Ukrainian people, government and the armed forces with military equipment, humanitarian and financial assistance and giving shelter to millions of refugees. Today it is even more important that we all support Ukraine."

Adam Easton
Warsaw Correspondent

More than 1.89 million people have fled Ukraine to Poland since the war began, the Polish Border Guard agency has said.

More than half a million may have already left the country, according to Warsaw University migration research prof Maciej Duszczyk.

And 94% of those crossing the border have been Ukrainian citizens.

On Tuesday alone, 66,600 people crossed the frontier, the agency wrote on Twitter, down 7% from Monday.

By 06:00 GMT on Wednesday, 13,600 people have crossed, down from 17,500 during the same period on Tuesday.

Most refugees have gone to large cities including Warsaw, Krakow and Wroclaw, which are experiencing difficulties coping with the numbers.

Image source, Getty Images

Justin Bronk, research fellow at the defence think-tank, the Royal United Services Institute, has been updating the Today programme on where the fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces is actually happening.

Kyiv

Central Kyiv is still occasionally being hit by cruise and ballistic missiles, while the heavy fighting is happening in the northern suburbs.

But the Russians have limited capacity. They're making relatively small, single-battalion sized attacks - not enough for them to make major advances.

"I don't think at this point that Russia can take the city centre. I don't think it's possible with the combat power they have," Bronk says.

Even so, Russia will maintain its pressure on the capital to try to force Ukraine's hand in ceasefire talks, he says.

Odesa (south)

Russia's naval forces moved forward and shelled the port city of Odesa yesterday before moving back again. They seem to have moved closer again this morning.

A full-scale attack from the sea on Odesa could be a threat to Ukraine, but Russia's not in an ideal position to launch such an attack yet because land troops that would reinforce the navy are too far away - they've been held up in their thwarted advances on the city of Mykolaiv.

If Russia launches a naval attack on Odesa anyway, it would expect to see a lot of losses. "It would be interesting to see if they are that desperate," Bronk says.

Donbas region (east)

The heaviest fighting continues to be in the east, particularly around Russian-occupied Luhansk.

Russian forces there are trying to move west across to Dnipro to link up with its troops from the south - if they manage that, the risk is that Ukrainian troops still in the Donbas region would be surrounded.

Image source, EPA

Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are "not easy" but there is "hope for compromise", Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov says.

"I am guided by the assessments given by our negotiators," he says.

"They say that the negotiations are not easy for obvious reasons. But nevertheless, there is some hope of reaching a compromise," Reuters quotes Lavrov as saying during an interview with the RBC news outlet.

He says problems are not just over Ukraine's neutrality and demilitarisation but also over security for people in eastern Ukraine - where the rebel-held areas of Donetsk and Luhansk are.

Ukrainian officials say they have killed a fourth Russian general in a sign that Moscow's commanders are increasingly being forced to lead from the front.

Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor at Kyiv's interior ministry, claimed on Telegram that Ukrainian forces killed Russian Major General Oleg Mityaev during intense fighting on the outskirts of the south-eastern city of Mariupol.

The BBC cannot independently verify this claim and Moscow has yet to comment on reports of his death.

Gerashchenko wrote that Mityaev was the commander of the 150th motorized rifle division and posted a photo of what he said was the dead officer.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also reported the death of another Russian general during his nightly address from Kyiv, but didn't name him.

Russia is believed to have about 20 Major Generals in Ukraine leading the invasion.

Loud explosions were heard earlier this morning in western areas of Kyiv, 12 hours into a 35 hour curfew.

Two people were injured when a 12-storey residential building was hit in the Shevchenko district

The city's mayor has warned it is a "difficult and dangerous moment for the capital city".

We have some more from UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss now, who tells BBC Breakfast the first refugees are expected to arrive under the Homes for Ukraine scheme next week.

She says the matching process will officially open on Friday but says she is not sure how refugees will make their way to the UK.

Truss thanks the British people for their "incredible generosity" - after more than 122,000 expressed an interest in hosting a Ukrainian refugee.

Later talking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme she says the first precursor to any successful peace talks has to be a ceasefire and Putin withdrawing his troops.

"It is very hard for Ukraine to negotiate with a gun against its head," she says, adding she fears the Russian president is playing "smoke and mirror games".

She says she has always thought the debate around Ukraine joining Nato is a "smokescreen" and Putin wants to recreate the Soviet Union.

An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine's counter-offensive against Russia's invasion "radically changes the parties' dispositions".

Ukraine's airforce says it's destroyed Russian war planes and shot down missiles, while its army has inflicted "devastating blows" on groups of Russian troops. These claims haven't been independently verified.

Mykhailo Podoliak said on Twitter , externalthe most notable things happening in the war right now aside from the counter-attack are that Russian journalists are quitting TV channels in protest at the war, and Russia is trying to find people in its allied countries who might come to fight for Putin in Ukraine.

Podolyak is one of the negotiators in the peace talks ongoing with Russia. He says there are "fundamental contradictions" during the talks but "certainly room for compromise".

Image source, Getty Images

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskly has called directly on senior Russian officials and media figures to resign from their positions and take a stand against the invasion of his country.

Speaking during a nightly address from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, Zelensky addressed directly "all the officials of the Russian Federation".

"If you remain in office, if you do not oppose the war, the international community will deprive you of everything," Zelensky said. "Everything you have earned over the years. This is already being done."

"The same goes for the propaganda system," he went on. "The fourth branch of power in Russia. If you stay to work for propaganda, you are putting yourself at much greater risk than if you just leave."

"Quit! A few months without a job is definitely better for you than a lifetime of international persecution," he concluded.

Asked about the situation in Kyiv, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says it is "very, very, very difficult".

She tells BBC Breakfast the UK is doing what it can to get supplies into the city and support Ukrainians in their defence of the capital.

"I can't make predictions about the future but what we do know is Putin's plans are not going according to plan, he is not making the progress he hoped and as a result is resorting to more and more extreme techniques and weaponry," she says.

She says she "genuinely" can't answer the question of whether Kyiv will eventually fall, saying that no one predicted that the planned invasion would go "quite so badly for Russia as it has".

She says the UK will provide President Volodymyr Zelensky - who she describes as a "truly inspiring figure" - with all the support it can.

It is "absolutely right" that the UK looks at alternative sources of oil and gas to Russia, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says, as she defends the prime minister's trip to the Gulf.

She tells BBC Breakfast Vladimir Putin has "shattered European security" and used "terrible weapons and terrible force" in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"One of the ways Putin funds his war machine is through oil and gas revenues and of course I'm not saying we agree with every single policy of Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates but they do not pose a threat to global security in the way Vladimir Putin does," she says.

The foreign secretary says that we also need to bring other countries into the UK's circle of influence and pull countries away from Russia.

She says 141 countries voted against Russia at the UN and says "we need to keep those countries on board and need to work with them".

Truss adds that we have to stop Putin at "all costs" - "he is the real threat the world faces".

James Waterhouse
Kyiv correspondent, BBC News

It's quiet here in Kyiv. You can hear the birdsong, but you can also hear the thuds of shell fire once again in a north-westerly direction, which we've heard for the last few mornings. Its clear the Russian forces are trying to focus their advance there.

And earlier this morning a 12-storey building in the Shevchenko district was hit by Russian shelling.

We drove around the city yesterday morning and we could see some of the devastation caused by either direct missile hits or missiles being intercepted in the sky.

We saw a metro station that had been hit, we saw tower blocks where the whole faces had been effectively ripped down and the windows had imploded.

That is why the mayor, Vitali Klitschko, has announced this curfew. There are concerns that the next two days could be particularly intense in terms of fighting.

But people here are ready to mount a defence. Very few Ukrainian cities have fallen to the Russian advance, and they'll be determined that the same happens here.

Nevertheless, we have this UK assessment that Russia is struggling to sustain its advances in locations across the country apart from Mariupol.

There is also a more optimistic tone again in terms of peace talks continuing today. But it is very strange talking about peace talks when a city is in a curfew, the streets are even more empty that before and the shells haven't stopped firing.

Russia has targeted civilian infrastructure in the south-eastern city of Zaporizhia for the first time since its invasion began, the head of the Ukrainian regional military administration has said.

In a message posted to Telegram, Oleksandr Starukh wrote that a train station and a public park in the city had been hit by Russian missiles.

"The morning was not good... The rockets landed in the area of ​​the Zaporozhye-2 railway station. According to preliminary data, no one was killed. The second rocket landed in the area of ​​the botanical garden".

Starukh claimed the attacks occurred as people from the besieged city of Mariupol arrived in Zaporizhia.

He said regional officials have already "resettled more than 3,000 people, including 772 children" from the port city.

Jenny Hill
BBC correspondent, Moscow

It's fair to assume that Moscow would be thrilled if Ukraine followed through on what we're getting hints of from President Zelensky - some kind of commitment that Ukraine would never join Nato.

That's certainly one of Moscow's aims in this war, but it's hard to say if it would be enough to stop President Putin.

He also wants Ukraine to hand over chunks of territory. That, at the moment, is considered an unacceptable demand by Zelensky. So it's hard to see how much progress is actually being made in these talks - although the fact that they're continuing to happen is a positive sign in itself.

We should be in no doubt that Putin needs to find a way to bring this war to an end, because so many Russian soldiers are dying and being injured. But he needs to be able to tell his people that he's won this war, so needs to feel he's got something significant out of it.