Jessica Parker
BBC News, Brussels

Image source, Reuters

Lithuania’s foreign minister says the EU "cannot get tired" of imposing sanctions against Russia, or helping Ukraine.

Gabrielius Landsbergis warned against a "feeling in the room that we would like to sit down and take a breath".

He was speaking to reporters in Brussels as he arrived for a meeting of EU foreign and defence ministers.

Specifically on sanctions he said it was "unavoidable" to start talking about the energy sector.

"And we definitely can talk about oil. Because it is the biggest revenue to Russian budget and also it’s quite easily replaceable," he said.

Lithuania, which borders Poland, Latvia, Belarus and the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast, has been among the most hard-line and vocal nations when it comes to sanctions against Russia.

Ukrainian authorities say at least six people were killed when a shopping centre and a number of houses were hit in the Podilskyi district of Kyiv.

Video released by Ukraine's State Emergency Service captured the moment when the centre was bombed.

Firefighters were later seen trying to rescue people stranded beneath the rubble.

Warning: This video contains distressing images.

Wyre Davies
BBC News, Dnipro

We've been hearing about the situation in the besieged south-eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where people are trapped without power, food or water amid intense bombardment and the dead are being buried in the street.

Our correspondent has been catching up with some of those who fled the city earlier in the war.

At a café in the city of Dnipro, which has itself has come under Russian fire, I met Oksana. With her husband Andrii, and her parents, she fled Mariupol last week through mined roads and a dozen hostile Russian army checkpoints.

They all politely turn down our offer of coffee. Oksana said it would be an insult to the family members they left behind in parts of Mariupol, from where it was impossible to flee.

“Absolutely we were taking a risk but at that point I didn’t care whether I’d die in Mariupol or die trying to get out," she said.

Her husband, Andri, said there was no water supply in the city, no power, no heating and no communications so they had no choice but to go.

“We knew there was a chance we’d be targeted and we realised we had to risk it. If we would have stayed, the chances of surviving would be zero," he said.

Image source, Reuters

More now on an ammonia leak at a chemical plant near the city of Sumy, which we reported earlier had been contained.

Officials have said that a 50-ton tank of the poison gas was damaged when the Sumykhimprom facility was hit by Russian shelling, and that this created an ammonia cloud.

The cloud affected an area of about 2.5km (1.5 miles), the region's governor, Dmytro Zhyvytskyy, said.

He said one injury had been reported - a worker at the plant. Residents of the nearby city of Novoselytsya were advised to shelter because of the wind direction.

Ammonia is largely used to make fertilizer and is corrosive. It can cause pain and burns to the airway and injuries to the eyes.

• Read more on this story here

Hugo Bachega
BBC News, Lviv

Image source, Getty Images

Dmytro Gurin, a member of the Ukrainian parliament who is from Mariupol, tells me he believes Russia is trying to starve the city to force its surrender.

Ukraine has rejected a Russian deadline for its forces to stop fighting in the besieged port city, saying there could be no question of soldiers laying down their arms. Gurin has said the city, where an estimated 300,000 people are trapped, will not surrender.

"Russians don't open humanitarian corridors, they don't let humanitarian convoys enter the city," he says.

"We clearly see now that the goal of the Russians is to start to [create] hunger [in the city] to enforce their position in the diplomatic process, and if the city does not surrender, and the city will not surrender, they won't let people out."

Gurin says teams are still unable to clean through the rubble of a theatre which Ukrainian officials say was bombed by Russia last Wednesday. Hundreds of people are believed to remain trapped in the basement, which withstood the attack. Moscow denies targeting the building.

"The services cannot clean this rubble because the shelling never stops and bombing never stops. It’s really dangerous," he says.

Gurin could not give an estimate on how many people had managed to flee the area as "we don't have connection with Mariupol".

More now from Gen Sir Richard Barrons on what can we expect from Russia's military strategy in the days ahead.

He tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We're going to see them applying firepower on the Ukrainian military in depth, they're going to hit their supply line, their logistics and air bases, as well as the forces doing the fighting.

"And then they'll pound away at cities and territory they feel they need to own."

In that respect, the Ukrainian port city of Odesa is Russia's next target in the south. Taking Odesa would isolate Ukraine's economy from the (trading routes via) the Black Sea, he says.

The Russians would keep pressure on Kyiv in the meantime, he adds, because that was the political centre of gravity.

But they know it is too big an objective and "too well defended to force their way into anything like the whole of the city".

Gen Sir Richard Barrons, former UK Joint Forces commander, has been speaking to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 about the significance of the battle for Mariupol.

He says securing the city is important to Russia in order to complete a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, and if Russia does so, they will see it as a major strategic success.

"If you look at the method they've adopted, they couldn't walk in, they couldn't drive in with their tanks, so they pounded it to rubble, and that's what we should expect to see anywhere else that really matters to them."

He says there have been three main failures in the Russian military approach so far:

• the failure to appreciate what the situation was going to be like in Ukraine
• then the failure to reset to heavier forces over the last three weeks - the forces assembled have been too small to have an effect and they tried to do too much at once
• and the continued failure to take control of the airspace above Ukraine.

James Waterhouse
Kyiv correspondent, BBC News

Image source, STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE OF UKRAINE

The authorities tell us that at least six people were killed when a shopping centre and a number of houses were hit in the Podilskyi district of Kyiv, about eight miles (13km) north from where we are.

There were a series of very loud bangs at about 22:30-23:00. You almost don't initially react because you get used to it, then you're met with a wall of energy - the wind that hits the side of the building and the windows.

It's hard to tell what that was, whether it was an anti-missile system that the city has been deploying in recent weeks, or if it was an impact. But we woke this morning to those images of burning buildings.

It is a commercial part of the city, surrounded by residential areas. Regardless of whether it was the intended target, the concern is that, with Russia not having the air superiority it would like, with it not potentially - according to Western experts - having the capacity to surround Kyiv like in other cities, this will be the tactic for a while: Russian forces will get in positions to launch heavier artillery strikes and effectively try to bombard the city into submission.

The UK Ministry of Defence says it believes Kyiv remains Russia’s top prize in this war, despite the army's frustrated advances elsewhere.

Adam Easton
Warsaw Correspondent

An update now on the latest figures on refugees fleeing Ukraine, where an estimated 10m people are displaced, either within the country or externally.

More than 2.1 million people have fled the country for Poland - 2,114,000 since the war began - the Polish Border Guard said on Monday.

Numbers crossing are falling, however.

On Sunday alone, 33,800 people crossed the frontier, the agency wrote on Twitter, down 16% from Saturday.

By 06:00 GMT on Monday, 5,700 had crossed, that’s down 17% from the same period on Saturday. Some of the people fleeing have already left Poland for other destination countries.

Warsaw University migration research prof. Maciej Duszczyk estimates around 1.2 million people remain.

More than a quarter of a million people (264,000) have returned to Ukraine via Poland since the war began.

Image source, Getty Images

If you're just joining us, or catching up, here are some of the key developments on day 26 of Russia's invasion of Ukraine:

• Ukraine has rejected a Russian ultimatum offering people in the besieged city of Mariupol - where around 300,000 people are believed to be trapped - safe passage out of the port if the city surrenders
• The mayor of Mariupol earlier told the BBC that Moscow's humanitarian promises could not be trusted, vowing that Ukrainian forces would fight on
• The situation in the city, which is encircled by Russian troops and been devastated by shelling, has been described as "Hell on Earth" by an MP there as food and medical supplies run low
• Attacks on other Ukrainian cities are continuing, several loud explosions were reported from Kyiv, where authorities said houses and a shopping centre were hit
• But the UK's Ministry of Defence has said Russian forces advancing on the capital from the north-east have stalled, with the bulk of them still 15 miles (24km) from the centre of the city
• Meanwhile, there has been an ammonia leak at a chemical plant in the north-eastern city of Sumy, which is also surrounded by Russian forces. Officials there are telling people within a three-mile radius to leave because the gas is hazardous

And with that, this is Yvette Tan, Andrew Clarence and Frances Mao signing off. Our colleagues Claire Heald, Mal Siret and Alexandra Fouché in London will continue to bring you the latest.

Earlier this morning, we reported there were concerns in the city of Sumy about an ammonia leak at a chemical plant.

The region's governor said it'd been caused by Russian shelling, and had warned people within a five-kilometre radius to leave the area.

However, authorities have managed to contain the leak after two hours, Dmytro Zhyvytskyy said.

"Emergency crews are working to settle the ammonia cloud. There is no threat to the population," he said on Telegram.

Hugo Bachega
BBC News, Lviv

“Hell on Earth”. That’s how Yaroslav Zhelezniak, a Ukrainian MP from Mariupol, described the situation in his native city. And it really is desperate.

Mariupol has been surrounded by Russian forces, which have prevented the creation of corridors to allow the distribution of humanitarian aid.

Around 300,000 residents are trapped inside, with no electricity, running water or heating. And as food and medical supplies run low, the crisis could get worse, with people going hungry and diseases spreading.

Residents spend most of their time in shelters and basements as Russia continues its unrelenting attack on the city, from land, air and sea, officials say.

Pictures show a city in ruins, with entire neighbourhoods devastated. The mayor, Vadym Boychenko, told me last week that over 80% of residential buildings had been either damaged or destroyed, a third of them beyond repair.

Bodies are being left in the streets as it’s too dangerous to get them. When they’re finally collected, some end up buried in mass graves, another symbol of the horror there.

Even a Russian general has acknowledged that a terrible humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in the city. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t admit that his own forces were responsible for that.

Russia fired two missiles at a military training ground in Rivne, in west Ukraine, Vitaliy Koval, the head of the regional administration has said.

In a video statement he said the strikes happened on the morning of March 21.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify these claims.

The UK's Defence ministry says Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, remains Russia's priority and they expect a renewed push in the next few weeks.

In the latest morning update, external, they said heavy fighting continued north of the capital but Russian advances from that direction had stalled.

"Despite the continued lack of progres, Kyiv remains Russia's primary miltary objective and they are likely to prioritise attempting to encircle the city over the coming weeks."

Several hours have now passed since a deadline set by Russia for Ukraine to give up the besieged port city of Mariupol, where 300,000 people are believed to be trapped with dwindling supplies.

What had Russia said?

The Russian military had given Ukraine until 05:00 Moscow time (02:00 GMT) on Monday to announce the city's surrender, promising that in return it would would safeguard two humanitarian corridors for civilians to leave the city.

How did Ukraine respond?

Ukraine rejected the ultimatum. "There can be no question of any surrender, laying down of arms," the country's deputy prime minister was quoted by Ukrainska Pravda news outlet as saying.

Speaking to the BBC, an advisor to the city's mayor said Russia's promises could not be trusted and the defenders would fight to the last soldier.

What could happen now?

It's not clear.

Moscow did not specify what its troops encircling the city would do if the surrender ultimatum was rejected.

The Ukranian Armed Forces has this morning released its daily update, on the 26th day of the invasion:

• It says the Ukrainian Air Force hit seven Russian targets earlier on Sunday - one aircraft, four unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and two cruise missiles
• The "position and nature of the actions of the defence forces have not changed significantly" over the past day, it added
• It says there has been a decrease in the intensity of the use of manned aircraft by Russia, but that it has been using unmanned aerial vehicles in order to assess the effectiveness of strikes

• In the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, forced mobilisation measures are reportedly being carried out by Russian forces

The BBC has not been able to independently verify these claims.

We've written a lot about the extensive bombardment of Mariupol - the city in the south that Russia is focused on winning so it has unimpeded control of a south-east stretch of the country.

The city is completely encircled by Russian troops meaning residents are trapped.

And satellite photos have shown how continual shelling over the past two weeks has destroyed so much of the city.

Below is one graphic demonstrating the scope of damage across just one district.

New Zealand has pledged to provide Ukraine with additional funds of NZ$5m ($3.46m) in funds as well as non-lethal equipment.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the money would directed to a Nato fund that provides fuel, communication equipment and first aid kits to Ukranian forces.

It will also support Ukraine with other surplus tactical equipment.

New Zealand has so far sent assistance of around NZ$11m to Ukraine

Joel Gunter
BBC News, Lviv

Dymtro Kotenko had been on his first military deployment when he died. He was just 21.

There was no family around Dmytro Kotenko when they put him in the ground. His parents did not hear the gunshots that rang out over his grave. They did not hear the sound of the ribbon tied to the wooden cross above him as it fluttered in the wind.

They did not see the rough earth that first landed on his coffin and they did not lay a flower over him when he was completely covered by the earth.

Most likely, Kotenko's parents did not know their son was being buried that day in the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv. They were 600 miles away, with his two younger brothers, near the eastern city of Sumy, which was being so heavily shelled by Russian forces that it was cut off from the outside world.

Kotenko's parents did know that their son was dead. He died on 26 February, the third day of the Russian invasion, near to the southern city of Kherson.

Image source, Ukrainian presidency

Israel is making efforts to mediate between Ukraine and Russia and could potentially be a location for future top-level peace talks, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

"The prime minister of Israel, Mr. Bennett is trying to find a way of holding talks," Zelensky said a video address to the Ukrainian people posted Sunday.

"We are grateful for his efforts, so that sooner or later we will begin to have talks with Russia, possibly in Jerusalem".

"This is the right place to find peace, if possible," he said.

Zelensky's comments came after he addressed Israel's parliament by video link on Sunday.