Hugo Bachega
BBC News, Lviv

If confirmed, the attack on a school in Mariupol would be the latest civilian building to have been targeted by Russia in the besieged city. About 400 people were sheltering there, the city council said.

Pictures from Mariupol show entire neighbourhoods in ruins, with countless apartment blocks and other non-military facilities, including a hospital and a church, damaged by shelling.

Russia, however, denies attacking civilian sites.

Last Wednesday, the city authorities accused Russia of bombing a theatre in the city centre, which had been clearly marked as a civilian shelter, with the word “children” in Russian written on the ground outside the building. Moscow rejected the accusation.

The theatre’s basement withstood the attack, and about 130 people have left the site, authorities said. But 1,300 are estimated to remain there, mostly women, children and elderly people. On Saturday, the mayor told me fighting in the area was hampering efforts to rescue them.

Communication with the city is difficult, which makes it hard to independently verify the claims. This difficulty also fuels the agony of so many waiting to hear from their loved ones trapped inside.

Ukrainian MP Halyna Yanchenko has told the BBC's Sophie Raworth that the situation in the besieged port city of Mariupol, which is completely surrounded by Russian forces, is “very tense”.

Asked if the city could fall, she explains the Russians “had bombed about 80% of all the buildings in the city”.

She says around half a million people lived in Mariupol before the invasion and people are trying to find shelters in places like theatres, schools, hospitals and churches, but adds all these types of buildings are being attacked.

She says around 130 people have been rescued from the theatre that was bombed on Wednesday and the authorities are trying to negotiate a humanitarian corridor to allow people to leave the city.

She says a couple of thousand people have managed to escape the city in the last few days.

Image source, .

Image source, Getty Images

If you're just joining us, here are all the latest developments from Ukraine:

• Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minster Olha Stefanishyna has accused Russia of "genocide" and alleged that "women have been raped for hours and then murdered"
• Officials in the besieged south-eastern city of Mariupol say thousands of residents have been taken against their will and transported to Russia
• Meanwhile, the authorities in Mariupol say Russian forces have shelled a school in which 400 people were sheltering, destroying the building and burying dozens under the rubble
• Russia's air force says it has launched a hypersonic missile at a Ukrainian target for the second consecutive day
• Elsewhere, the UK's Ministry of Defence has said Russian forces have made "limited progress" in the invasion and have instead turned to shelling Ukrainian cities "indiscriminately"
• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged China to strongly condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, describing the war as a battle between good and evil

The UK Labour Party's Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, says it was “utterly distasteful and shameless” for UK PM Boris Johnson to compare the struggle of Ukrainians fighting Russia's invasion to people in Britain voting to leave the European Union.

In a speech yesterday, Johnson said Britons, like Ukrainians, had the instinct "to choose freedom" and cited the 2016 Brexit vote to leave the EU as a "recent example".

Reeves told the Sunday Morning programme on BBC One she thinks Johnson “should withdraw those comments”.

Meanwhile, Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who appeared on the same programme, says he doesn't think Johnson was making a "direct comparison" and was citing "general observations about people's desire for freedom".

He says with regards to Ukraine, the prime minister has been "galvanising global opinion to send a very strong message to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that his aggression will not be tolerated".

Image source, Getty Images

Ukraine's deputy prime minister has accused Russia of committing acts of "genocide" during its invasion of her country.

Speaking on Sky's Sophy Ridge programme, Olha Stefanishyna said she "absolutely believes" that acts of genocide have been committed by the Russian regime, and said that President Vladimir Putin and leaders in the Kremlin "are war criminals".

Stefanishyna said that the number of "civilian victims" killed and injured during the Russian invasion has been "far greater than the armed forces of Ukraine," and alleged that "women have been raped for hours and then murdered" by Russian soldiers.

But she pledged that "Ukraine will resist for as long as needed" and said the country's public prosecutor will seek to charge Russian troops suspected of war crimes, noting that some 2,000 cases have already been opened.

She also praised Turkish and Israeli leaders for their roles in seeking to broker a peace deal, but warned that Ukraine will not agree to any settlement which would see Russia claim its territory, which she said was the country's "red line" in discussions.

However, she said there may be some space for discussions on the "reintegration" of separatist eastern regions which have been "occupied" for the past eight years.

Oleg Savchuk, who managed to escape from the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol with his girlfriend and is now in Dnipro, has been speaking to BBC Breakfast.

He says it’s a “horrible situation” and they made the decision to leave Mariupol with their parents and grandparents after their homes were destroyed.

Oleg says there was no gas and electricity and they weren’t able to call anyone or receive any information, adding they survived by working with their neighbours to go outside and make fires to boil water and cook.

He says he developed a “new skill” to identity the bombs being used by Russian forces to determine if they needed to go to the shelters to hide from them.

He says the city was being bombed almost around the clock, adding there was only one or two hours a day when the bombs fell silent.

Image source, Reuters

Russian forces have conducted a second hypersonic missile strike against Ukrainian targets, Moscow's defense ministry has said.

Officials said the strike, using Russia's new Kinzhal missile system, destroyed a fuel storage site in the south of the country.

"Kinzhal... hypersonic ballistic missiles destroyed a large storage site for fuels and lubricants of the Ukrainian armed forces near the settlement of Kostyantynivka in the Mykolaiv region," officials said.

The BBC cannot independently verify this claim, though it would mark the second consecutive day in which Russia has targeted Ukrainian sites with such weapons if true.

Russian officials say the Kinzhal can hit a target up to 2,000km (1,240 miles) away and fly faster than 6,000km/h (3,728mph).

Read more about the significance of hypersonic missiles here.

Image source, Getty Images

Ukrainian defense officials have claimed that Russia's Kostroma 331st Guards Airborne Regiment has been destroyed by its forces.

In an update posted to the Ukrainian General Staff's Facebook page, officials said that the regiment had been involved in engagements around the capital city of Kyiv and that just one member of the unit had survived an encounter with Ukrainian troops.

The update also claimed that the commandant's office in the Russian city of Belgorod was investigating a case against 10 servicemen of the 138th motorised rifle brigade who mutinied after taking heavy losses during an offensive in the eastern city of Kharkiv.

The BBC cannot independently verify these claims.

Image source, Reuters

The UK's finance minister has said that signs of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are encouraging, but must be treated with some "scepticism".

Speaking to the Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme on Sky News, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said that any potential settlement between Moscow and Kyiv "must be on Ukraine's terms".

Sunak didn't rule out the UK acting as a guarantor of any potential peace deal between the two countries, but said that it is "too early" to get into the shape of any agreement.

He also said that some 10,000 Ukrainian refugees have been granted visas to come to the UK, and added that "over 100,000 people are being checked" by officials.

But he ruled out taking in Ukrainian refugees himself, saying that "my wife and I will be helping in other ways". Some 138,000 UK residents have signed up to the "Homes for Ukraine scheme" which would see residents take refugees into their homes.

Russia's defence ministry says it has killed dozens of "mercenaries" in a missile strike on a training centre in western Ukraine, the state-run RIA news agency has reported.

Maj Gen Igor Konashenkov, a spokesperson for the ministry, said more than 100 Ukrainian troops and "foreign mercenaries" were killed when a "high-precision missile" hit a Ukrainian base near Ovruch in the Zhytomyr Oblast.

"High-precision air-launched missiles struck at the training centre for special operations forces of the Ukrainian armed forces, where foreign mercenaries who arrived in Ukraine were based," Konashenkov said.

The BBC cannot independently verify the claim.

Following earlier reports of explosions at the iron and steelworks in Mariupol, known as the Azovstal factory, Ukrainian lawmakers now say it was "destroyed" by Russian shelling.

Azovstol's director general said on Telegram that the factory was hit, but did not specify the extent of the damage.

He said factory workers had taken safety measures since the war began so that it would not pose a wider risk to residents.

The steelworks had a been key asset in Mariupol, on the Sea of Asov, which Moscow has been battling for two weeks to take.

It's a small city but strategic for Russia so it can have a land corridor between the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, controlled by Russian-backed separatists, and Crimea, the peninsula Russia invaded and annexed in 2014.

The UK's ministry of defence has said Russian forces are shelling Ukrainian cities "indiscriminately" as their advance stalls in eastern regions.

In a daily update posted to social media, defence officials say Russian shelling of a large number of cities has resulted in "widespread destruction" and huge numbers of civilian casualties.

The post also said that Russian forces "are continuing to encircle a number of cities across eastern Ukraine" but noted that they have made just "limited progress" in capturing these key targets over the past week.

Official warned that it is likely Moscow's forces will unleash "heavy firepower to support assaults on urban areas as it looks to limit its own already considerable losses, at the cost of further civilian casualties".

A Ukrainian assessment released on Saturday claimed that over 14,000 Russian troops have been killed so far, though the BBC cannot independently verify this figure. Western officials believe at least 7,000 troops are dead.

A worker with the United Nations children's agency Unicef has told the BBC that residents in the besieged south-eastern city of Mariupol are in desperate need of humanitarian help, but that Russia's constant bombardment is making aid work almost impossible.

Speaking from the western city of Lviv, Joe English told BBC Breakfast "there aren't words sufficient to describe" the severity of the situation in the city, but that many aid workers are being put in "the line of fire" when they try to help.

"As we've seen with humanitarian corridors, they can be agreed in principle but the reality on the ground is very different," he said.

He emphasized the importance of allowing humanitarian groups to work effectively, noting that its not just "a case of getting people out of these areas, we also need to be able to get humanitarian supplies in because not everyone is going to be able to leave".

English also spoke of a "children's crisis" erupting across the country.

"Yesterday I met with a kid called Danilo whose got T-cell leukaemia," he said. "This is a kid who needs dedicated medical support and he can't get it here."

"But every day we're hearing these stories. The day before that it was Andrei, 15, blown up in a landmine accident and lost his mum. The day before that it was a 10-week-old baby called Anna whose mother made the impossible decision to leave her in a maternity hospital in Kyiv because Anna has a heart defect and will need intense medical support and her mother didn't feel she could provide that."

"Inside the country this is a children's crisis. For children who've fled across the border this is a children's crisis. It's simply staggering," English concluded.

City officials in embattled Mariupol on Saturday accused Russia of taking thousands of locals across the border against their will over the past week.

The BBC is yet to verify these claims – but more testimonies are emerging of such events.

One official, Pyotr Andryuschenko, told the New York Times , externalbetween 4,000 and 4,500 residents had been moved to Tangarog, a city in the Rostov region which borders Ukraine’s south-east corner. He added that they had been taken without their passports.

One Ukrainian man also told the newspaper he had been in contact with three families who had been forcibly relocated.

“Now the Russians are walking through the basements, and if there are people left there, they forcibly take them to Taganrog,” said Eduard Zarubin, a doctor who left the city earlier this week.

Russia has not directly addressed the claim, but its defence ministry on Friday claimed thousands of Ukrainians wished to "escape to Russia" and its government was helping them.

Mariupol is currently the scene of intense street battles between Russian and Ukrainian troops. The city has been shelled continuously over the past two weeks and local officials estimate 2,400 people have died already.

Communication with the city is difficult as phone lines are down. Residents have no electricity, gas or running water, and are rationing their food supplies. Ukraine says Russia has also stopped convoys of humanitarian aid making their way into the city.

Given the flurry of news coming out of Mariupol this morning, it's worth considering why Russia considers the southern city so important.

If Mariupol falls, it would give Russia control of one of Ukraine's biggest ports and create a land corridor between Crimea and the Russian-backed regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Connecting Crimea with mainland Russia via the rebel-held areas would make it much easier for Russia to move goods and people to and from Crimea. Russia has wanted this since 2014, when the conflict in the east began.

Currently the peninsula is connected to Russia via a single bridge, built at great expense after the Russian annexation.

Image source, Reuters

The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Lviv says that as Russia's military advance comes to a halt, Moscow may be moving into a new phase of the war where its forces try to bomb Ukraine "into submission".

Speaking from the western Ukrainian city, Fisher told BBC Breakfast that Russian forces have "effectively ground to a halt" in most parts of Ukraine.

"It does appear now that the Russians are shifting focus from trying to move vehicles and tanks and armour in on the ground to instead shelling and targeting cities from the air. We've seen that in Mariupol, we've seen it in Kharkiv and we've seen it to a certain extent in Kyiv as well," Fisher said.

Meanwhile, the BBC's James Waterhouse in Kyiv says the war could be entering "a deadly holding pattern".

Speaking from the capital city, Waterhouse said Russia's failure to gain control of the Ukrainian airspace and intense resistance from its troops has forced its Moscow to re-evaluate their advance and resort to broad bombardments of cities from afar.

"The other problem they're facing is they're spreading themselves too thin," Waterhouse said. "Even if Mariupol was to fall in the south-east, the cost of that for the Russians, because of the level of Ukrainian resistance, means that they won't be able to keep pushing forward."

"We understand they've shelved plans for now to try and advance on the southern city of Odesa, another significant strategic location," he added.

"That's why the worry is here in Kyiv that troops... will resort to getting in positions where they can bombard the city like we've seen elsewhere because they don't currently have the numbers to surround it."

Image source, PA Media

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has strongly urged China to condemn Russia's invasion.

In an interview with the Sunday Times newspaper, , externalJohnson said supporting Russia was akin to choosing the wrong side in World War Two, describing it as a battle between good and evil.

"As time goes on, and as the number of Russian atrocities mounts up, I think it becomes steadily more difficult and politically embarrassing for people either actively or passively to condone Putin's invasion," he told the paper.

But he said he believed Beijing was starting to have "second thoughts" about its neutral position.

China is yet to condemn Russia's actions and there have been reports that Moscow has asked it for help. On Friday, US President Joe Biden warned China there would be "consequences" if it provided assistance.

On Saturday Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi called the country's position "objective and fair", adding that it would not respond to external pressure on the issue.

"Time will tell that the Chinese stance is on the right side of history," he said.

Read more from Johnson here.

It's just past 09:00 local time in Ukraine. Here's a recap of the latest news:

• Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has condemned Moscow's incessant bombing of Mariupol, the port city encircled by Russian troops in the south-east, calling it "a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come"
• In the last few minutes, Mariupol officials have said that Russian forces bombed a school sheltering 400 people. Earlier on Saturday officials said that Russian forces were taking thousands of locals from the southern Ukrainian city into Russia against their will. The BBC cannot independently verify their claims
• These developments come after intense fighting on the streets of Mariupol on Saturday
• Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian forces refrained from launching offensives and spent most of Saturday replenishing supplies and repairing damaged equipment, according to claims by the Ukrainian military

And with that, this is Tessa Wong and Frances Mao signing off in Singapore. Our colleagues Rob Corp and Matt Murphy in London will continue to bring you the latest.

The Mariupol city council says Russian forces bombed a school where 400 people were taking shelter on Saturday.

In an update on Telegram, it says the building was destroyed and people are under the rubble. Women, children and the elderly had been in the school, the officials said.

There's no information on casualties yet.

Communication with Mariupol is incredibly difficult, and the BBC has been unable to immediately verify the claim.

Hugo Bachega
BBC News, Lviv

Image source, Reuters

Every person we interview and every account we hear paint a desperate situation in Mariupol, which has been completely surrounded by Russian troops. An estimated 300,000 people are trapped, with no electricity, running water or heating.

Amid relentless Russian attacks, civilians spend most of their days in shelters and basements, as it’s too dangerous to go out, according to residents who have managed to escape. Communication with the city is difficult, with the phone network said to be operational just a few hours a day.

No place seems to have been spared. The mayor, Vadym Boichenko, told me earlier this week that over 80% of residential buildings had been either damaged or destroyed, a third of them beyond repair.

“There’s no city centre left,” he said. “There isn’t a small piece of land in the city that doesn’t have signs of war.”

Food and medical supplies are running low, as Russia has prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid. City officials estimate that at least 2,500 people have died in the three-week war, although they admit this is an underestimate as they are unable to count who is being killed.

Some of the dead are being left in the streets, as it is too risky to get to them. When they are finally collected, many end up buried in mass graves - another symbol of the horror there.