Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine.
As the battle for the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol has reportedly moved into the city center after weeks of devastating missile barrages, the United Nations estimates that one in five people in Ukraine have been internally displaced or have fled the country since Russia’s invasion began.
In Mariupol, which has held out for weeks amid brutal missile assaults, an adviser to Ukraine’s president said on Friday, “There is no chance for lifting the siege of Mariupol.” The mayor told BBC that there was now fighting in the city center. If Mariupol falls, it would be one of the few major cities to be taken by the Russians and would give their forces control of a swath of Ukraine’s southern coastline.
On Saturday, a Ukrainian official in Mariupol accused Russian forces of taking thousands of Ukrainians against their will across the border into Russia, and a desperate race continued in the hopes of rescuing any survivors entombed for a third night in the ruins of a theater-turned-shelter.
After days of a slowed offensive, Russian forces had success hitting military targets in recent days. On Friday, a Russian rocket attack on a Ukrainian military barracks in Mykolaiv killed more than 40 soldiers, according to a senior Ukrainian military official. And on Saturday the Russians said, and the Ukrainians confirmed, that they had hit a weapons depot in the west of Ukraine. Russia claimed that its forces had used advanced hypersonic missiles, but that could not be independently verified.
In other areas, the Ukrainians say they are pressing to take advantage of the slowed Russian ground offensive. Ukraine’s Army claimed to have taken back towns around Kherson, one of the first cities to fall to Russian forces. And to the west, the defense of the strategic city of Mykolaiv continued to hold, preventing a Russian advance on another key port city, Odessa.
Here are the latest developments:
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called publicly on Saturday for direct negotiations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but a senior Turkish official said that Mr. Putin was not ready for such talks.
Around Kyiv — Ukraine’s capital, a key target of the Russian offensive — new satellite imagery appeared to show Russian artillery establishing defensive positions, digging in for a long fight.
Ukrainian celebrities killed in the Russian invasion add an extra dimension to the country’s shock and anguish over the war.
People in the city of Lviv in western Ukraine placed 109 colorful, empty strollers on a public square to symbolize children killed in Russian bombardments.