Image source, Qays Najm/BBC

A Ukrainian mother who is now staying with a British MP after fleeing Ukraine says she and her son have been made to feel at home.

Anna Kolomiichuk and her son are staying with the Conservative MP for North Norfolk, Duncan Baker, and his family.

Mrs Kolomiichuk said she was relieved to be safe but worried about people such as her husband, who is still in Ukraine.

She said she cannot "find words to express how awful it is" in her homeland.

"The hardest thing to see is that there are people who don't believe this is really happening, who think it's fake," Mrs Kolomiichuk said.

"It is real and no matter what the news says. We have families, friends living in cities that have been bombed.

Read our full story here.

Image source, Reuters

2.681 million people have fled Ukraine to Poland since the war began, the Polish Border Guard has said.

The number of people crossing the border into Poland has fallen significantly in recent weeks and numbers going into Ukraine have risen.

On Monday, 24,000 crossed into Poland, down 16% from Sunday, the agency wrote on Twitter, external, and well below the record of 142,300 set on 6 March.

The average daily number of people crossing the border from Ukraine into Poland before the war started was 16,800.

On Monday, 16,600 people crossed into Ukraine from Poland.

Some of the refugees have already left Poland. Warsaw University migration research Prof Maciej Duszczyk estimates around 1.2-1.4 million remain. More than 800,000 Ukrainian refugees have registered for a Polish ID number.

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A chemical weapons expert from the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) is urging caution about a claimed chemical attack in Mariupol, noting that illness among Ukrainian soldiers may be the result of contamination encountered during fighting in industrial areas.

In a string of posts on Twitter, Dan Kaszeta - an author and former soldier in the US Army's Chemical Corps - says there remains "a paucity of information" about what took place in Mariupol.

The city's deputy mayor has claimed that the chemical attack was carried out by a Russian drone.

Kaszeta added that the symptoms that the Ukrainian soldiers are reportedly showing - such as shortness of breath - might be explained by the inhalation of fumes caused by fighting in a heavily industrial area.

"Mariupol is one big toxic burn pit at the moment," he said. "Somehow we're supposed to assume that one small drone payload of something is tragically unhealthier than the rest of this mess of an environment."

"It is, in fact, plausible," Kaszeta added. "But it's also plausible that we have a classic problem of smoke and flame and modern industrial materials."

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Ukraine's President Zelensky says the European Union must include oil and gas in its next sanctions package.

Speaking to the Lithuanian parliament, he praised the country for stopping imports of Russian gas but criticised the EU for being too hesitant in sanctioning Russia.

The EU met on Monday to discuss a sixth set of sanctions, which could have included Russian oil and gas, but failed to reach an agreement.

Read more here to see the sanctions currently being imposed on Russia.

Jonathan Beale
BBC defence correspondent reporting from Donbas

Image source, Getty Images

Of the population still left here in the Donbas region, there’s no doubt there is some pro-Russian sentiment.

We went out yesterday with a police patrol in the city of Kramatorsk: a city that was targeted by the Russians last week with a strike on the railway station which killed more than 50 civilians.

They were looking for what they called “saboteurs”.

The unit was stopping people, searching them, looking through their phones and seeing if they had photographs of Ukrainian defensive positions.

We spoke to the chief of police for the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. He says they are arresting individuals almost every day who are suspected of passing on information to the Russians.

He says it is a problem.

Russian officials have said that the focus of their forces is now the "complete liberation" of the Donbas, which broadly refers to Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Russian-backed separatists held significant territory before the invasion.

Western officials say they expect Russia to double or even possibly triple its troops numbers in the Donbas. Reports and satellite images suggest a build-up of Russian forces is under way on Ukraine's border, in Russia's Belgorod, Voronezh and Rostov regions.

Reinforcements are also building up in the Kharkiv region to support the Russian push south. They are hoping to advance down from Izyum towards Slovyansk and encircle Ukrainian forces, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

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When Russian President Vladimir Putin talks of Donbas, he is referring to Ukraine's old coal and steel-producing area.

What he really means is the entirety of two big eastern regions, Luhansk and Donetsk, which run from outside Mariupol in the south all the way to the northern border.

Nato also expects Russian forces to try to create a land bridge, running along the south coast west of Donetsk to Crimea.

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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 separatists, who created Russian-backed statelets during a war that began eight years ago.

Just before the war, Mr Putin recognised the entirety of the two eastern regions as independent of Ukraine.

If Russia were to conquer them it would give Mr Putin some sort of achievement from Russia's war.

And if it came before 9 May, he would even be able to celebrate on Victory Day, when Russia's military still marks the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.

Emma Vardy
Reporting from Ukraine

Image source, Family photo

Family and friends of a British man fighting in Ukraine have told the BBC that he has phoned them to say his unit is surrendering to Russian forces.

Aidin Aslin, who is from Newark, has been fighting in Ukraine since he moved there in 2018, and had become a marine in Ukraine's military.

Over the past few weeks, Aiden's unit has been defending the besieged city of Mariupol, which has been heavily bombarded by Russian forces.

His mother Ang Wood told the BBC that her son had told her they had no choice but to surrender.

“He called me and said they have no weapons left to fight. I love my son. He is my hero. They put up one hell of a fight," she said. “But he sounded okay. Boris [Johnson] needs to take Putin down."

Brennan Philips, a friend of Aiden's, also says he spoke to him by phone and was told the unit was without food, ammunition and supplies, leaving them no option but to surrender.

"They can't get out. They can't fight back. So they had no choice," he said. "I'm sure sure if they had a bullet left, they would have shot it."

Early on in the war, Russia vowed to criminally prosecute foreign volunteers caught fighting for Ukraine.

Image source, Getty Images

Toby Luckhurst and Mariana Maglych
Reporting from Lviv

Image source, Reuters

We’ve been hearing reports of a potential chemical attack in Mariupol, the Ukrainian city besieged by Russian forces.

Serhiy Orlov, the city’s deputy mayor, told us on the phone that the city council has confirmed a “chemical poisoning” delivered by a Russian drone.

“We cannot provide more detailed information," he said. “But we have confirmation from the military that this has happened.”

The allegation that chemical munitions had been used against Mariupol originally came from the Azov battalion - a Ukrainian military unit with links to the far right.

It is not clear how many soldiers were affected, but the battalion said its fighters had suffered minor injuries, including shortness of breath, with one man reportedly collapsing with "cotton legs".

The BBC cannot verify this allegation independently. Confirming anything in the area is extremely difficult, and the full picture of what is going on in the besieged port city is still unclear.

What we do know though is Russian forces continue to hammer Mariupol, which sits just a short distance along the coast from the Russian border. Capturing the city is one of Moscow's core aims in the war.

Image source, Reuters/Darrin Zammit Lupi

At least 186 children in Ukraine have been killed and 344 wounded by the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian prosecutor-general's office has said on Telegram.

The highest number of casualties were in the eastern region of Donetsk, where 113 deaths have been recorded, Ukraine says.

Ukraine also says 938 educational institutions have been damaged by shelling - 87 completely destroyed.

UN children's agency UNICEF has said nearly two-thirds of all Ukrainian children - some 4.8 million - have fled their homes since Russia's invasion started.

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We've more on Russian President Vladimir Putin's latest comments.

He's said Russia does not plan to isolate from the rest of the world, Russian news agency RIA reports.

Putin has also said Russia and Belarus will cooperate on infrastructure projects in space.

His comments came during a meeting with his close ally, the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. The pair were at a space centre in the Russian Far East.

Image source, PA Media

Dame Prue Leith, host of TV series the Great British Bake Off, has said she has heard nothing from officials after volunteering a log cabin she owns as a home for refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.

The UK government launched the Homes for Ukraine scheme on 14 March so that individuals, charities, community groups and businesses could bring Ukrainians to safety.

Some 12,000 people had arrived in the UK under Ukraine visa schemes as of last Tuesday, Home Office figures show.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, external, Dame Prue said:

Dame Prue added that many people who hear nothing about their offer to house refugees will "give a sigh of relief and give up".

Last week UK Home Secretary Priti Patel apologised for "delays" in the time it is taking for Ukrainian refugees to arrive in the UK.

However, she insisted the UK will "absolutely see changes in numbers" of refugees coming to the country.

Image source, Getty Images

The governor of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region has spoken of fierce fighting there - saying “the battles are continuing all day, every day”.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme through an interpreter, Pavlo Kyrylenko said hostilities were particularly intense on the demarcation line, separating territory controlled by the Ukrainian government from territory occupied by Russian forces or those allied to them.

He said Ukrainian forces in the region had “massively reinforced” themselves with the aid of military equipment sent by Western countries – and that any help was “very important at the moment”.

Image source, Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin

In a rare public appearance, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his forces carrying out Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine have been acting bravely, efficiently and using the most modern weapons.

He said Russia "had no other choice" but to start a military operation in Ukraine in order to protect Russia, and his forces will reach their objective, according to Interfax news agency.

"This is the way it will be. There is no doubt about it. The objectives are absolutely clear, they are noble," Putin said in remarks delivered at Vostochny spaceport in a ceremony pegged to Russia's Cosmonautics Day.

"The main objective is to help the people in Donbas," he said.

When he launched Russia's invasion in February, Putin said his goal was to "demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine" but has since changed the main military objective to the "liberation of Donbas".

He has repeatedly made the unfounded accusation that Ukraine has carried out genocide in the east and has used this as justification for Russia's attacks.

Image source, Reuters

More now on those unconfirmed reports of a chemical weapons attack in Mariupol.

Intelligence consultant Justin Crump has told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the attack, if verified, could fit a wider pattern of Russian behaviour on the battlefield.

It follows the “Syrian playbook”, he observes. Russian troops may begin with “small, deniable operations,” which the West may turn a blind eye to. But later, they “increase the scale”, he explains.

But Crump acknowledges that the situation is “very uncertain” in Mariupol. Ukrainian authorities say they are investigating the alleged use of chemical weapons there.

Russia itself has not yet commented on the allegations. It’s previously claimed that alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria – where its troops have been supporting the government – were staged.

Josh Cheetham
Open Source Analyst, BBC News

As we've reported, rumours have been circulating on social media of a chemical weapons attack by Russian forces in the besieged city of Mariupol.

The claims were first made yesterday by the Azov Battalion, a far-right Ukrainian militia fighting in the city.

In a video shared on Telegram, the group's founder and former commander Andriy Biletskyy said chemicals had been dropped over the city's Azovstal steelworks, which was being guarded by the Azov Battalion.

He said three people were injured, but no further evidence has been provided as yet.

Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malya has said that, based on preliminary information, phosphorus munitions may have been used, but investigations are ongoing.

Just yesterday, the spokesperson for Russia-backed Donetsk separatists, Eduard Basurin, publicly called for Russia to use its chemical, biological and radiological defence unit to "smoke out" Ukrainian troops from Azovstal.

In an interview with Interfax news agency, he's since denied that separatist forces have used chemical weapons in their attempts to take Mariupol.

The US has said that it was aware of the reports and could not confirm them. If true, they were deeply concerning, a Pentagon spokesman said.

Image source, Reuters

The Ukrainian Armed Forces have given their latest update on the Russian invasion.

They said enemy forces were regrouping in Russia near Ukraine’s eastern border. The update gave further confirmation of a battle for control of eastern Ukraine – with fighting around Donetsk and elsewhere. Officials said it was “likely” that invading troops would soon move to take control of Mariupol.

In the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukraine’s military claims to have repulsed six enemy attacks, and destroyed four tanks as well as several other Russian vehicles. It also says it’s hit seven air targets including a plane and two helicopters.

Yesterday, the governor of the Luhansk region said Russia was moving military vehicles in preparation for an anticipated new assault in the east. Western officials said they expected Russia to double or even possibly triple its troops numbers in the Donbas region.

Image source, .

Yogita Limaye
BBC News, Kyiv

The Russians have withdrawn from areas around Kyiv, but they've left deeply wounded lives. The BBC has heard first-hand testimony and found evidence of Ukrainian women being raped by invading soldiers.

In a quiet, rural neighbourhood 70km (45 miles) west of Kyiv, we spoke to Anna, who is 50. We have changed her name to protect her identity.

Anna told us that on 7 March she had been at home with her husband when a foreign soldier barged in.

"At gunpoint, he took me to a house nearby. He ordered me: 'Take your clothes off or I'll shoot you.' He kept threatening to kill me if I didn't do as he said.

Read more (warning: contains graphic descriptions of sexual violence):

'Russian soldiers raped me and killed my husband'

The UK's armed forces minister is asked on BBC Breakfast whether Britain's belief that President Vladimir Putin and the Russian leadership will be "held to account" for their actions in Ukraine means they will be tried for war crimes.

"I have every confidence in the international courts," Heappey says.

While Heappey accepts that President Putin will not be appearing before the International Court of Justice in The Hague "any time soon", he says this could happen "at a time when it’s possible to hold him to account and bring him to justice".

"Everything that is happening in Ukraine is being catalogued and he will be held to account," the minister says.

"Not just Putin, it is everybody in the chain of command beneath him," he says, adding that each and every Russian soldier is responsible for their conduct.

Heappey says the fact that war crimes trials happened long after the Bosnian war ended shows there is a "well-established route" to bring the perpetrators to justice.

The UK's armed forces minister says London is working to confirm whether Russian forces have used chemical weapons in Ukraine.

James Heappey tells BBC Breakfast that reports such munitions were used against the besieged southern city of Mariupol have been circulating on Ukrainian social media, but neither British defence intelligence nor their counterparts in Kyiv have been able to verify those claims.

Heappey adds that the UK is "working urgently" to find out if chemical weapons were used. He repeats the UK foreign secretary's comments on Monday night that Russia will be "held to account" and that any use of chemical weapons is "abhorrent" and "crosses a line".

If there is proof such weapons have been used then "all options are on the table" in terms of the international response, Heappey says.

"Verifying it is clearly very important," Heappey adds. "If chemical weapons were used it is a very important moment for our PM [Boris Johnson] and other heads of government around the world.

"President Putin must be aware the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable," he tells Breakfast.

Image source, Reuters

More than 600 companies are now known to have chosen to halt or reduce their work in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine in February - according to US-based academics.

The Yale University team has tracked the responses of more than 1,000 big businesses. It says despite many withdrawals, a number of Western firms are continuing their work as normal.

In their frequently-updated list, external, they've given 'grades' to each company based on how far it's curtailed its work.

Firms from Heineken to Netflix have been awarded an A for halting Russian engagements. On the other hand, the likes of Emirates Airlines and Chinese retailer JD.com are given an F for pursuing "business as usual".