Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainians are "defending the right to live" in an interview with CBS news from Kyiv.

"I never thought this right was so costly. These are human values -so that Russia doesn't choose what we should do and how I'm using my rights," he said.

He said that on a recent visit to Bucha, where Russia has been accused of war crimes, he witnessed "death, just death".

Image source, Finnish Customs

Finland’s foreign ministry has confirmed they will be sending Russian artworks back to Russia, after border officials temporarily halted the transfer.

Three shipments containing Russian paintings, statues and antiques were stopped by Finnish customs on Wednesday.

The artworks had been on loan from Russian museums in Italy and Japan, and were making their way back to Russia via Finland when they were seized.

Customs were looking to determine whether the items - worth around €42m ($46m; £35m) - would be classed as luxury goods. If so, the shipments would have been subject to economic sanctions imposed on Russia due to the war.

The shipments will be released once exceptions for cultural artefacts in the EU sanction rules come into force tomorrow, the ministry said on their website, external. Russian culture minister Olga Lyubimova confirmed that the paintings are being returned at the weekend.

If you're just joining us, here's all the latest news from the war in Ukraine.

Kramatorsk station attack

• President Biden has called the strike on a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk "yet another horrific atrocity committed by Russia"
• Ukrainian officials have said that around 4,000 people were at the station at the time of the attack, at least 50 of whom are known to have died

• Ukraine's President Zelensky has dismissed Russian denials that it carried out the strike, saying: "This is an evil that has no limits"
• The station has been used to evacuate thousands of people from Kramatorsk in recent days as Russia refocuses its campaign to Ukraine's east

Von der Leyen in Kyiv

• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrived in Ukraine on Friday, visiting Bucha before meeting President Zelensky in Kyiv

• She has indicated that the EU is ready to offer Ukraine a fast track to membership

• "Russia will descend into economic, financial and technological decay, while Ukraine is marching towards the European future," von der Leyen said
• A Western official has told the BBC that Russia has reorganised its military command ahead of an expected offensive in eastern Ukraine

International efforts

• Boris Johnson has announced the UK will be sending an additional £100m worth of "high-grade military equipment" to Ukraine
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is in London for talks, called on countries who are further away from Ukraine to take more refugees
• UK Home Secretary Priti Patel apologised for the time it has taken to get a system in place to allow Ukrainian refugees to apply to come to the UK
• Slovakia has sent its S-300 surface-to-air missile defence system to Ukraine

Image source, Reuters

The BBC has been to the scene of the strike in Kramatorsk that left dozens dead. The once busy station is now quiet, and food carried by those trying to flee is lying in the street.

One woman who witnessed the blast recalled those around her panicking, saying “people were screaming and crying”.

“Then I saw a wounded woman who was bleeding heavily, she was taken into a room with several wounded people there," she said.

“I saw people lying in front of the building - I didn't know whether they were wounded or dead.”

A man who also witnessed the attack said “people were panicked and stressed".

“Some of them were badly wounded and we tried to help them," he said.

Image source, Getty Images

As President Biden mentioned, Slovakia says it has sent its entire S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Ukraine, to help bolster the country’s air defences from Russian attack.

It is the first known case of a country sending an air defence system to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February, according to Reuters.

Confirming the news, Slovakia's Prime Minister Eduard Heger said: "I believe that this defence system will help save as many innocent lives as possible from the aggression of Putin's regime".

However, Heger emphasized donating the system to Ukraine "does not mean Slovakia has become part of an armed conflict."

Slovakia recently received the American Patriot missile system - another surface-to-air missile - from fellow-Nato members Germany and the Netherlands. Heger said the country would now get a fourth instalment of the Patriot system next week.

In the meantime, German and Dutch Patriot batteries - the units used to fire missiles - have been deployed to Slovakia as part of a temporary bolstering of Nato's eastern flank, and the US said it would put one Patriot missile defence system and troops to operate it in Slovakia.

"[The Patriots'] deployment length has not yet been fixed, as we continue to consult with the Slovakian government about more permanent air defence solutions," US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement.

Image source, Reuters

US President Joe Biden has accused Russia of carrying out a "horrific atrocity", external, after a missile attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine which killed at least 50 people and injuring 300.

President Biden blamed Moscow, saying its military struck civilians who were trying to evacuate and reach safety.

Russia has denied carrying out the attack.

Biden also thanked Slovakia's government for transferring a missile defense system to Ukraine, fulfilling one of Zelensky's top requests to help the country defend itself against Russia.

He said the United States will reposition a Patriot missile system to Slovakia and warned against complacency in the international effort to push back against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Image source, Reuters

The EU has handed President Zelensky a questionnaire which will lead Ukraine a step further in being granted EU candidate status at a conference in Kyiv.

Speaking to the Ukrainian President, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said the EU will support Ukraine to ensure its completion takes "weeks, not years", as the process has been somewhat accelerated due to the war.

"Russia will descend into economic, financial and technological decay, while Ukraine is marching towards the European future, this is what I see," she said.

Receiving the questionnaire in an envelope, Zelensky assured journalists that it would be ready in a week.

Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign policy chief, added that more than €7m had been allocated to support Ukraine in gathering and presenting proof of war crimes to the International Criminal Court.

Borrell also mentioned that EU delegates will soon return to the capital and he believes embassies will follow suit.

Gordon Corera
Security correspondent, BBC News

A Western official confirmed Russia had now reorganised the command of its operations in Ukraine with the general now in charge having had extensive experience from Syria.

The forces which invaded on 24 February were organised and commanded separately from the district from which they had come.

“There was really poor coordination across those different commands,” said the official, since Russian forces had never trained to work in this way. The Southern Military District Commander is now in charge of operations to attempt to provide better co-ordination - this is reported to be General Alexander Dvornikov.

“That particular commander has a lot of experience of Russian operations in Syria. So we would expect the overall command and control to improve,” the official said.

In terms of timing, the Western official thought political imperatives might take precedence over military priorities in Russia pushing forward to get some kind of success ahead of 9 May when the country marks victory in World War II. Western officials said they were seeing the piecemeal sending of more forces towards Donbas rather than pausing to allow forces to regroup properly.

“There's a tension between the military logic of getting the force properly set for a reinvigorated Russian operation into the Donbas, potentially using more appropriate tactics and learning some of the lessons from the disastrous operations largely so far, against a political imperative to actually get on with the operation and move quickly,” said the official.

Russia is thought to have slightly fewer than 100 battalion tactical groups available for operations, once they have been reconstituted after current moves. This would be a "substantial" Russian force but the official said Russian tactics have meant that even with numerical advantages they have been held back by smaller numbers of Ukrainian units acting in a far smarter way and with surprise.

“Unless Russia is able to change its tactics, and be far more effective at using all the tools to its advantage, if it fails to do that, then it's very difficult to see how they succeed in even these limited objectives that they've reset themselves, and certainly not at the pace that I think they would hope to do," the official said.

Image source, Reuters

More now on Russia's denial of accusations that it carried out Friday's deadly missile attack on Kramatorsk railway station.

The defence ministry in Moscow blamed Ukraine's armed forces for carrying out the attack. It said they were trying to stop civilians from leaving so that they could use them as human shields.

The ministry also claimed - without providing any evidence - that the rockets had been fired from the nearby Ukraine-controlled town of Dobropillia.

It insisted it did not use the type of Tochka-U missile that was reportedly fired, whereas the Ukrainian military did.

However, analysts point to images and videos on social media, external that appear to show the Russian military using the Tochka-U.

Tochka-U rockets are extremely inaccurate, regularly missing their targets by half-a-kilometre or more, according to Amnesty International weapons experts.

Image source, EPA

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called on other Western countries further away from Ukraine to take in more refugees, during a joint press conference with Boris Johnson.

Speaking in Downing Street on Friday, Scholz described the displacement of millions of people from Ukraine as "one of the terrible consequences of this terrible war".

“Many countries in Europe have hosted refugees, in particular those along [Ukraine’s] borders – Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania - and we are very grateful to these countries,” he said.

“The biggest share of refugees has reached Poland, more than two million. We have more than 300,000 refugees in Germany.

"And this is why we [would be] happy and grateful if many countries would practicably participate in hosting refugees, because this will be a major task and challenge ahead.”

Speaking to the BBC on Friday, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel apologised over the time it has taken to get a system in place to allow Ukrainian refugees to apply to come to the UK.

Home Office figures show the government has so far granted 41,000 visas but just a quarter of them - 12,000 people - have actually arrived in the country.

"I'll be very candid, it has taken time," said Patel. "Any new scheme takes time, any new visa system takes time. It's been frustrating. I apologise, with frustration, myself."

BBC Monitoring

Image source, Rossiya 24

A Russian TV channel aired footage of a dummy, calling it evidence that Ukrainians were preparing a fake incident to discredit its armed forces. But it turned out to be part of a TV drama being filmed near St Petersburg.

State-run rolling news channel Rossiya 24 showed footage of two people moving the dummy yesterday and reported "they are obviously intending to present it as a corpse”.

Rossiya 24’s reporter claimed that the use of dummies is widespread in Ukraine. “Dozens of fakes with similar dummies regularly appear on Ukrainian Telegram channels,” the report said, without offering evidence.

However the footage was quickly debunked. TV director Nadezhda Kolobayeva wrote on Facebook that the footage wasn’t from Ukraine. Instead, she said, it was filmed on 20 March in Vsevolozhsk, just east of St Petersburg.

The director said the two people in the shot were the show’s stunt coordinator and an assistant. The dummy, she said, goes by the name Albertik.

The BBC has contacted Rossiya 24 for comment.

Image source, Reuters

Boris Johnson has said the UK will be sending an additional £100m worth of "high-grade military equipment" to Ukraine.

The prime minister was speaking at a joint press conference held with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at Downing Street this afternoon.

He said the shipment would include "more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, which fly at three times the speed of sound, another 800 anti-tank missiles, and precision munitions capable of lingering in the sky until directed to their target".

He said more helmets, night vision goggles, and body armour would also be sent.

Johnson added that the UK would continue to look to support former Soviet bloc countries, whose equipment is more easily operable by the Ukrainian armed forces, in their efforts to send military aid.

Asked whether the UK would be willing to send tanks to Ukraine, he said: “I’m in principle willing to consider anything by way of defensive weaponry to help the Ukrainians protect themselves and their people.”

The PM also spoke about the strike on the Kramatorsk train station, which he described as "unconscionable", adding it "shows the depth to which Putin's once vaunted army has sunk".

Jeremy Bowen
BBC News, Kyiv, Ukraine

Image source, Lee Durant/BBC

Predictions at the start of the invasion of a quick Russian victory have been upended by the Ukrainians' willingness to fight, but the war is settling into a long struggle that could still endanger the wider world too.

Remember how it was in Kyiv after the Russians invaded: thousands cramming bitterly cold railway platforms, pushing and shoving to get any train heading away from the Russians.

Most of the passengers were women and children. Men stayed. The law stated they could not leave the country as Ukraine needed them to fight.

Image source, Lee Durant/BBC

As I drove into Kyiv from the south a few days into the invasion, a Russian convoy 40 miles long was heading towards the city from the north and north-west, from Belarus, Russia's ally.

Everyone in Kyiv feared the worst. The city centre was mostly empty, except for armed and anxious men at checkpoints who were ready to believe that anyone behaving in a way they didn't like was a Russian saboteur.

In six weeks, so much has changed. The long convoy got bogged down and destroyed. The Russians retreated. The war is far from over, but the Ukrainians won the battle of Kyiv. The first battle. There could be another.

Read more here.

More now from the scene at Kramatorsk where at least 50 people died and dozens were wounded after rockets hit the railway station.

Video from outside the station in eastern Ukraine shows damaged cars and personal belongings that were abandoned after the area was hit.

A remnant from a rocket is embedded in grass near the station. It has the Russian words "for children" written on its side. However the phrasing - "za detei" in Russian - suggests it was fired in support of children, rather than aimed at children.

Emergency services have taken the injured to hospital and removed bodies from the scene. Russia denies involvement in the strike.

Jenny Hill
BBC News, Moscow

Image source, Getty Images

Russians know that their sons and husbands are dying in Ukraine.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov's acknowledgement to Sky News that there have been "significant" losses may not cause too much of a public stir, given that state TV does cover some funerals and the authorities have admitted to more than 1,300 deaths (although the real figure is believed to be much higher).

There may be bereaved families who now question Vladimir Putin's "special military operation".

But they're up against a muscular Kremlin propaganda machine which is parroted by state media - to which there is now virtually no independent alternative - which celebrates its fallen soldiers as heroes who have given their lives defending the motherland against the aggression of Ukraine.

It's a brazen attempt to cast Russia both as the victim and the occupier of the moral high ground.

TV and newspapers feature regular reports of the bravery and courageous exploits of individual soldiers. In one such report the author noted that "the fight between good and evil is not stopping".

Tom Bateman
Reporting from Zaporizhzhia

Image source, .

More civilians fleeing the fighting in the south and east have been arriving in the town of Zaporizhzhia.

At a refugee centre helping families and small children, I met Kateryna. Her family managed to get through the front line after fleeing Chernihivka, 150km from here. Holding her little boy Demyd, Kateryna tells me they had to drive through mined areas to escape the town. "It was becoming really tense," she says.

Volunteers are handed out clothes to people arriving here. Another little boy watches us as we film, holding his teddy bear. His dad is shaking as he tells us about the shelling they had to live through in their village, before escaping on Thursday.

Image source, Reuters

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has been visiting the town of Bucha near Kyiv in northern Ukraine. Bucha was the town where bodies of civilians were found lying in the street after Russia's withdrawal.

Russia denies killing civilians and has accused Ukraine of staging the deaths to discredit its troops. However, there is strong and growing evidence that war crimes have been committed by Russia.

"It is the unthinkable has happened here," said von der Leyen during her visit. "We have seen the cruel face of Putin's army."

Image source, Reuters

Image source, EPA

Vladimir Putin has made a public appearance at the funeral of ultra-nationalist Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Footage from a memorial service in Moscow shows Putin lay a bunch of flowers by Zhirinovsky's casket before making the sign of the cross and bowing his head.

Zhirinovsky died on Wednesday aged 75, reportedly following complications from Covid.

He was ostensibly a political opponent of Putin's, but was in fact part of a managed opposition that enables the Kremlin to keep up an appearance of democracy in Russia.

The Russian president has made only occasional public appearances in recent months. A large pro-war rally staged at a stadium in Moscow on 18 March was his first public appearance since launching the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.

BBC News Analysis

Image source, DONETSK REGIONAL STATE ADMINISTRATION

Russia has denied the attack on Kramatorsk railway station and claims missile fragments found nearby are from a Tochka-U tactical projectile "only used by the Ukrainian armed forces".

Its ministry of defence announced it had stopped deploying the weapons in 2019 in favour of the more modern Iskander-M missiles, according to Russian media.

Ukraine's Donetsk governor has, however, accused the Russian military of using the Tochka-U to detonate cluster munitions in the attack on Kramatorsk.

Manisha Ganguly, an investigative journalist for the BBC World Service, has been looking into Russia's claims and believes they don't add up.

She says there's evidence Russia used Tochka-U tactical missiles on 24 February during a strike on a hospital in Vuhledar, Donetsk Oblast, which killed four civilians and wounded 10.

An Amnesty International missile investigator, external analysing photos of the weapon scrap linked to the incident determined a "9M79 Tochka ballistic missile was used in the attack".

These weapons are extremely inaccurate, regularly missing their targets by half a kilometre or more, Amnesty International has said.

Tochka missiles were also used on 19 March in Luhansk, according to the Ukrainian MoD, external. The Ukrainian military say they shot down one of these missiles with their air defence system.

According to missile expert N.R. Jenzen-Jones, all Tochka missiles come from an old Soviet arsenal.

"All 9M79-1 missiles were assembled by the Votkinsk Machine-building Plant in the Udmurt Republic [in Russia], beginning in the Soviet era," he says.

Image source, Getty Images

Fifty people are now thought to have died after Kramatorsk train station was hit by rockets, according to the region's governor.

Writing on Telegram, external, Pavlo Kyrylenko said as well as the 38 people who died at the train station, 12 others who were wounded at the scene later died in hospital.

He said 98 people in total were taken to hospital after the attack. Of the 98, 16 were children, 46 were women and 36 were men.

He added that he expected more people to seek medical help within the coming days.