Image source, Reuters

As we've been reporting, the US has expanded its sanctions to include two daughters of Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

A White House statement described them as Putin's two adult children, and although they weren't named advanced reports said they are Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, who Putin fathered with his ex-wife Lyudmila.

Putin has always been secretive about his family. Although he has acknowledged he has daughters and has said he's proud of them, he has batted away questions about their identities.

Vorontsova was born in 1985, and is an endocrinologist and co-owner of a medical company.

Tikhonova, born in 1986 is in academia and business. She's also a talented dancer, and has competed in international rock 'n' roll contests.

In its statement the White House said "these individuals have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people".

Now, more on the US decision to sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin's daughters and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's wife and daughter.

Asked whether the move was symbolic or would have a significant impact, a senior administration official said: "We believe that many of Putin's assets are hidden with family members, and that’s why we’re targeting them."

"We have reason to believe that Putin, and many of his cronies, and the oligarchs, hide their wealth, hide their assets, with family members that place their assets and their wealth in the US financial system, and also many other parts of the world," the official said.

Read more here about the US sanctions.

What do the new British sanctions involve?

Here’s some more detail on the latest sanctions against Russia just announced by the UK.

A Foreign Office statement said the new measures would include:

• Freezing the assets of Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, following a similar move from the US
• A ban on all British investment in Russia – which was worth £11bn in 2020
• A commitment to ending imports of Russian coal and oil by the end of the year – with a plan to stop gas imports "as soon as possible thereafter"
• Bans on other imports from Russia, including of iron and steel products

Alluding to alleged war crimes in Ukraine, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said: "We are showing the Russian elite that they cannot wash their hands of the atrocities committed on Putin's orders."

Image source, Getty Images

People living in the east of Ukraine have been urged by the government to evacuate while they have the chance. But what is Russia planning in the region?

Moscow has pulled troops away from Kyiv and shifted its focus to the old coal and steel-producing Donbas – which comprises two big eastern regions, Luhansk and Donetsk.

The Russian leader has repeatedly made the unfounded accusation that Ukraine has carried out genocide in the east.

When the war began, two-thirds of the eastern regions were in Ukrainian hands. The rest was run by Russian-backed separatists.

President Putin has recognised the two eastern regions as independent of Ukraine.

The next step would be to annexe Donbas, just like Putin did with Crimea after a discredited referendum in 2014.

Read more about why Russia is trying to encircle Ukraine's east.

As we reported earlier, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it today helped escort people who had been the besieged city of Mariupol to safety in the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

The ICRC led a convoy made up of private vehicles which had made their own way out o­f Mariupol after the organisation had been unable to enter the besieged city itself.

Giving more details of the operation to BBC News, the ICRC's Pascal Hundt said the organisation had got within 20km of Mariupol but had been unable to proceed because of the security conditions in Mariupol.

He said yesterday evening the ICRC collected people leaving Mariupol and also from the southern city Berdyansk.

Other buses and private cars went onto join the convoy, he said, meaning that more than 1,000 people ended up reaching Zaporizhzhia just after noon local time.

He added: "It was a difficult operation, complex operation, but we really feel relieved that more than 1,000 people managed to leave from hell where they wanted to go."

He said he hoped more rescue operations would happen in the days to come, adding that the ICRC would "spare no efforts" to make this possible.

The UK has imposed sanctions on Russia's largest bank, Sberbank.

It's also committed to ending all imports of Russian coal and oil by the end of 2022.

Natalie Sherman
New York business reporter

Image source, Getty Images

Western sanctions against Russia must expand to include oil and gas sales, members of the US Congress told US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday.

Ms Yellen, who oversees implementation of US sanctions against Russia, is testifying in Washington about the international effort to respond to the war in Ukraine.

Western allies have hit Russia with severe sanctions, but so far allowed loopholes for oil and gas transactions, worried about economic impact in their own countries.

Some in Congress said those should end.

“We can do more,” said Rep Andy Barr, Republican from Kentucky.

“The atrocities… necessitate the US use its full sanctions power, including comprehensively limiting Russia’s ability to profit from oil and gas sales.”

Ms Yellen said the US was working with allies on the issue as they push to reduce their reliance.

“Unfortunately, many of our European partners remain heavily dependent on Russian natural gas and oil,” she said. “We’re working closely with them on sanctions and want to remain aligned with them.”

Here's a bit more information about the new US sanctions targeting Russia. They include:

• economic measures to ban new investment in Russia
• severe financial sanctions on Russia's largest bank private bank, Alfa Bank, and its largest financial institution, Sberbank
• sanctions on critical major state-owned enterprises
• sanctions on Russian government officials and their family members

President Putin’s adult children, relatives of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and members of Russia's Security Council will be affected by the measures announced by the White House.

The White House has announced new blocking sanctions against a number of members of the Russian elite, including Putin's adult daughters and relatives of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Ukrainian opposition MP Kira Rudik has been describing horrific scenes in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv.

She’s visited the town a number of times since it was liberated by Ukrainian forces and says she has seen “many bodies”.

Rudik says she saw “female bodies that were run over by tanks multiple times” as well as “female bodies that were burned and then left along the road”.

She says she has talked to women who were raped in front of their children and to mothers whose children died of pneumonia “because they were in the basement for 39 days”.

Rudik says the worst thing that she heard was a person saying that Russian soldiers told them “you are the dirt and we are cleaning this land from the dirt”.

Russia has denied that its forces carried out atrocities in Bucha.

The mayor of Bucha, Anatoliy Fedoruk, has been speaking to the BBC's Newshour programme about the allegations of war crimes by Russian forces in his town, which is back under Ukrainian control.

He hid in a building from Russian troops during their occupation and says he witnessed the killings.

"Currently we know there were 320 peaceful civilians shot dead by Russian occupiers and this figure is getting bigger."

Anatoliy says he saw the moment people were "brutally shot" by Russians as they tried to escape the town by car.

"There was a pregnant woman. Her husband was screaming, asking for them not to shoot her, but they just brutally shot her."

"So he had to bury her on the sideroad and instead of a cross [he] put the number plate of his car."

The mayor also described what he knew about images appearing to show bodies of dead civilians in the street, describing "people with their hands tied, their bodies put on each other [like] a pile of wood".

He says there were "five tortured young people, with their hands tied behind their backs, shot in the back of their heads".

Russia has denied that its forces carried out atrocities in Bucha.

Image source, Getty Images

Ukraine's deputy prime minister has warned people in large parts of eastern Ukraine to evacuate while it's still possible.

Iryna Vereshchuk said that military leaders in the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk regions were asking local people to try to leave and that they were doing all they could to make this happen "in an organised way".

If people did not leave, she said, they would soon find themselves under fire and under threat of death.

"There is nothing that they can do against this, and we won't be able to help them," she added.

Russia has said it is refocusing its military operations on the Donbas, comprising both the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city, is close to the Russian border and has been targeted by Russian forces since the beginning of the war.

Image source, Reuters

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban says he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin at length earlier today and asked him to put in place a ceasefire in Ukraine.

He told a news conference that he'd invited Putin for peace talks in Hungary, along with the Ukrainian and French presidents as well as the German chancellor.

He says Putin's response was "positive, but with conditions", but gave no further detail.

Orban also told journalists that he wouldn’t give in to pressure to expand sanctions to oil and gas imports from Russia.

He says he is prepared to pay roubles for Russian gas, breaking ranks with the European Union which has sought a united front in opposing Moscow's demand for payment in the currency.

Nationalist Orban is seen as having warm relations with Russia, and described Brussels bureaucrats and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky as "opponents" in his victory speech after he was re-elected this week.

Tom Bateman
BBC News, Zaporizhzhia

Eight buses escorted by the International Committee of the Red Cross have arrived in the the town of Zaporizhzhia, carrying civilians who have fled Mariupol and towns nearby.

A little boy is leaning out of a window, waving at us.

This is the first official convoy to make it through Russian lines since the Red Cross team was held by police in Russian-occupied territory outside Mariupol on Monday.

People are disembarking. They are exhausted and shell shocked. There’s a tent here where families are starting to gather and are being given a hot meal, water and tea.

Image source, .

Mother and daughter Tetiana and Yulia made it to the city in their own vehicle shortly before the convoy. They tell me how they had to survive by drinking dirty water from a well in Mariupol.

“There are starving people,” says Yulia. “People are having mental breakdowns."

"People are being buried in the streets. Shallow graves, half a metre deep at best. [There are] dead bodies all over the streets.”

The BBC has not been able to independently verify this account.

Nato's secretary general Jens Stoltenberg is just speaking in Brussels, where foreign ministers from the security alliance are gathering this afternoon.

"We have seen no indication that President Putin has changed his ambition to control the whole of Ukraine and rewrite the international order," he says.

The secretary general says that Nato needs to support Ukraine, sustain the sanctions on Russia and strengthen its own defences and deterrents.

He says the conflict may last a long time "and we need to be prepared for that".

Paul Adams
BBC diplomatic correspondent

As Nato foreign ministers gather in Brussels, the next phase of Russia’s war in Ukraine is very much on their minds.

Nato’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg thinks it will be some weeks before Russia's ready to launch its next big offensive in the Donbas.

Troops and equipment have only just been withdrawn from the area around Kyiv and will take time to be resupplied and relocated to the east.

Other forces including foreign fighters, mercenaries and conscripts are being added to the mix.

But when the offensive comes, Nato officials warn that it will be “horrendous and barbaric”.

They believe Russian President Vladimir Putin would like to be able to declare some kind of victory, however limited, by 9 May when Russia holds its annual Victory Day parade, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany at the end of the Second World War.

Nato members are determined to use the coming days and weeks to make sure Ukraine is as ready as it can be, and deny the Kremlin anything to celebrate.

Image source, .

Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky has thanked Irish politicians for their support following Russia's invasion.

Addressing the Irish houses of parliament, Zelensky said that although Ireland is a neutral country, it had "not remained neutral to the disaster and to the mishaps that Russia has brought to Ukraine".

He also called on the government to convince its EU partners to strengthen international sanctions against Russia.

Tom Bateman
BBC News, Zaporizhzhia

We're on the outskirts of the town of Zaporizhzhia in south-east Ukraine, heading back into the centre as we've heard a Red Cross humanitarian escort is due to arrive.

I've just been at a dormitory housing dozens of families who have escaped the besieged port city of Mariupol and other towns in the region.

A mother of five young children, Liudmyla, is sharing a small room with another family.

They managed to get out of the town of Huliaipole, which she says has been flattened by Russian bombardment.

The children told me they were terrified. They have been hearing the sound of shelling and explosions and they saw Russian tanks and soldiers at the end of their street. They spent three days in the basement, with food and provisions running out.

It's a story I’m hearing over and over again as more families manage to make it north from Mariupol and the areas nearby.

There are thought to be hundreds of people on the Red Cross convoy heading into Zaporizhzhia.

They had made their own way to a town near Mariupol as the aid team still can't access the city.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Ukraine says, external it has met a convoy of private vehicles which had made its own way out of Mariupol and then accompanied the 500 people travelling from the besieged southern city to safety in Zaporizhzhia.

The organisation has not been able to reach Mariupol itself.

Image source, ICRC

Hugo Bachega
BBC News, Lviv

Image source, Getty Images

The mayor of the besieged Ukrainian port of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko, says the humanitarian condition in the city is "terrible", and that Russian airstrikes have continued almost non-stop.

Boychenko has told the BBC that Russia launched more than 100 missiles on Tuesday alone.

The BBC cannot independently verify the claim as communication with the city is extremely difficult.

The mayor is no longer in the city, which has been surrounded by Russian troops for more than a month, and receives updates from remaining residents.

Pictures from Mariupol show a city devastated, with the city council estimating that 90% of buildings have been damaged or destroyed, a third of them beyond repair.

Boychenko estimated that at least 120,000 residents remain in Mariupol. Attempts by the Red Cross to allow the safe evacuation of civilians have failed in recent days.

You can read more about the impact of the seige of Mariupol on its residents here.

"It's a real hell that Russia created in my city," Boychenko says. "They are war criminals and must be punished for what they’ve done. But all we have to do now is to safely evacuate people from the city".

The latest assessment by the UK Ministry of Defence says heavy fighting and Russian airstrikes have continued, and that the situation for civilians is worsening.

Image source, .