Russia-Ukraine war latest: fighting in centre of Mariupol; Biden outlines ‘consequences’ if China aids Russia – live | World news

It is just after 11pm in Ukraine. Here is where things stand:

• The European Union is considering creating a solidarity fund for Ukraine. The plan was announced on Friday and is meant to be used for people’s basic necessities. An EU official told Reuters the creation of the fund would be discussed at a summit of EU leaders next week.

• Fighting has reached the centre of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where 350,000 civilians have been stranded with little food or water. The Russian defence ministry said its forces were “tightening the noose” around the city, and that “fighting against nationalists” was taking place in the city centre. Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, appeared to confirm the claim.

• Russian missiles struck an aircraft repair plant in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, 50 miles from the border with Poland and a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Ukrainians. Blasts were heard at about 6am on Friday, preceded by the sound of air raid sirens, as a mushroom-shaped plume of smoke could be seen rising in the sky.

• Russia’s bombardment in the east of Ukraine continued on Friday. In the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s state emergency service said a multi-storey teaching building had been shelled on Friday morning, killing one person, wounding 11 and trapping one other in the rubble.

• Hundreds of people remain buried under the rubble of a theatre in the devastated city of Mariupol that was hit by a Russian airstrike on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. In a video address, Zelenskiy said that more than 130 people have been rescued so far but officials have said rescue efforts had been hindered by the complete breakdown of social services in the city and fears of future Russian attacks.

• Kyiv city administration said today that 222 people have been killed in the Ukrainian capital since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, including 60 civilians and four children. In a statement, it said a further 889 people have been wounded, including 241 civilians and 18 children, in the capital. The Guardian has not been able to verify these figures.

• Russian forces are “holding captive” a Ukrainian journalist, Victoria Roshchyna, according to the Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske. In a statement, Hromadske said they believe Roshchyna was detained by the Russian FSB around 15 March.

• Six and a half million people are currently displaced within Ukraine, the UN has said today, nearly twice as many as have managed to flee the country. The new figure, which dwarfs the 3.3 million refugees who have entered mainly EU territory, is a big jump on the UN’s last estimate of 1.85 million.

• Refugees now fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are “more traumatised” than those who escaped in the first phase of the war, the UN said. Daily border crossings from Ukraine into Poland, the country that has received the most arrivals, have fallen by around half from a peak of about 100,000 daily, Reuters quoted UN refugee agency official, Matthew Saltmarsh, as saying.

• The US president, Joe Biden, described to China’s president, Xi Jinping, in a phone call today “implications and consequences” if Beijing provides material support to Russia as it attacks Ukrainian cities and civilians, the White House said. “The Ukraine crisis is something that we don’t want to see,” Xi was quoted by Chinese media as saying to the US president.

• Vladimir Putin praised Russian “unity” over what the Kremlin is calling its special operation in Ukraine during a rare public speech at the national stadium in Moscow. As Putin was finishing his speech, the broadcast was suddenly cut off and state television showed patriotic songs. The Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov blamed a “technical failure” for the cutoff.

• A World Food Programme (WFP) official said on Friday that food supply chains in Ukraine were collapsing, with a portion of infrastructure destroyed and many grocery stores and warehouses now empty. Jakob Kern, WFP emergency coordinator for the Ukraine crisis, also expressed concern about the situation in “encircled cities” such as Mariupol, saying supplies were running out and its convoys had not yet been able to enter the city.

• Pope Francis has denounced the “perverse abuse of power” on display in Russia’s war in Ukraine and called for aid to Ukrainians, whom he said had been attacked in their “identity, history and tradition” and were “defending their land”. Francis’s comments were some of his strongest yet in asserting Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign state and to defend itself against Russia’s invasion.

Hello, I am Abené Clayton, a California-based Guardian reporter. I’ll be bringing our blog readers the latest news out of Ukraine for the next couple of hours.

The European Union is considering creating a solidarity fund for Ukraine, to help provide basic services in the country and meet citizens’ immediate needs, European Council president Charles Michel said on Friday.

“The fund would give liquidity for continued support to authorities and in the longer term serve as backbone for reconstruction of a free and democratic Ukraine once hostilities stop,” Michel said in a tweet.

“The bravery and resilience Ukrainians are showing is humbling,” Michel said. “The #EU will continue to stand by you in the face of the Kremlin’s aggression.”

An EU official told Reuters the creation of the fund would be discussed at a summit of EU leaders next week. The Russian invasion has cut Ukraine off from international financial markets, and the fund could provide the liquidity needed to keep government services running, to continue defence efforts and to provide basic services, Reuters reported.

The Biden administration is still concerned that China is considering answering Russia’s request for military equipment, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a briefing.

“We have that concern. The president detailed what the implications and consequences would be if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians. And that is something we’ll be watching and the world will be watching,” Psaki said.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will push over 40 million people into extreme poverty through price spikes for food and energy, according to the Center for Global Development.

In an analysis blog, the Washington-based thinktank said food commodity prices since the start of the conflict have risen above levels experienced in price spikes in 2007 and 2010.

It cited World Bank Research showing that the 2007 spike may have pushed as many as 155 million people into extreme poverty, and separate research showing the 2010 episode pushed 44 million into extreme poverty.

The researchers said the most immediate concern was for direct wheat customers of Ukraine and Russia, which together account for more than a quarter of world wheat exports. These include Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Turkey, but prices will rise worldwide as importers compete for alternative supplies.

Reports are emerging that the crowd which witnessed Vladimir Putin’s speech in Moscow earlier today may not have been there entirely voluntarily.

Russian TV footage showed a boisterous crowd at the Luzhniki stadium, attendees waving flags and cheering ahead of a speech where Putin hailed Russian “unity”.

But BBC journalist Will Vernon reported that at least some of the crowd had been “forced” to attend.

During the speech – which Russian state TV cut off in an apparent glitch – Putin repeated his unfounded claims that Ukraine was committing genocide in the Donbas region.

The US has “seen a number of missteps” by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, the US defense secretary said on Friday.

In an interview with CNN Lloyd Austin said Russian troops “have not progressed as far as quickly as they would have liked”, adding that Russian forces have “struggled with logistics”.

Austin told CNN he has not seen evidence of “good employment of tactical intelligence” or “integration of air capability with a ground maneuver.”

“There are a number of things that we would expect to have seen that we just haven’t seen,” Austin said.

“Many of their assumptions have not proven to be true as they entered this fight.”

“I think [Russia] envisioned that they would move rapidly and very quickly seize the capital city, they’ve not been able to do that,” the Pentagon chief added.

This is Adam Gabbatt taking over from Léonie Chao-Fong.

It is 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand now:

• Fighting has reached the centre of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where 350,000 civilians have been stranded with little food or water. The Russian defence ministry said its forces were “tightening the noose” around the city, and that “fighting against nationalists” was taking place in the city centre. Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, appeared to confirm the claim.

• Russian missiles struck an aircraft repair plant in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, 50 miles from the border with Poland and a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Ukrainians. Blasts were heard at about 6am on Friday, preceded by the sound of air raid sirens, as a mushroom-shaped plume of smoke could be seen rising in the sky.

• Russia’s bombardment in the east of Ukraine continued on Friday. In the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s state emergency service said a multi-storey teaching building had been shelled on Friday morning, killing one person, wounding 11 and trapping one other in the rubble.

• Hundreds of people remain buried under the rubble of a theatre in the devastated city of Mariupol that was hit by a Russian airstrike on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. In a video address, Zelenskiy said that more than 130 people have been rescued so far but officials have said rescue efforts had been hindered by the complete breakdown of social services in the city and fears of future Russian attacks.

• Kyiv city administration said today that 222 people have been killed in the Ukrainian capital since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, including 60 civilians and four children. In a statement, it said a further 889 people have been wounded, including 241 civilians and 18 children, in the capital. The Guardian has not been able to verify these figures.

• Russian forces are “holding captive” a Ukrainian journalist, Victoria Roshchyna, according to the Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske. In a statement, Hromadske said they believe Roshchyna was detained by the Russian FSB around 15 March.

• Six and a half million people are currently displaced within Ukraine, the UN has said today, nearly twice as many as have managed to flee the country. The new figure, which dwarfs the 3.3 million refugees who have entered mainly EU territory, is a big jump on the UN’s last estimate of 1.85 million.

• Refugees now fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are “more traumatised” than those who escaped in the first phase of the war, the UN said. Daily border crossings from Ukraine into Poland, the country that has received the most arrivals, have fallen by around half from a peak of about 100,000 daily, Reuters quoted UN refugee agency official, Matthew Saltmarsh, as saying.

• The US president, Joe Biden, described to China’s president, Xi Jinping, in a phone call today “implications and consequences” if Beijing provides material support to Russia as it attacks Ukrainian cities and civilians, the White House said. “The Ukraine crisis is something that we don’t want to see,” Xi was quoted by Chinese media as saying to the US president.

• Vladimir Putin praised Russian “unity” over what the Kremlin is calling its special operation in Ukraine during a rare public speech at the national stadium in Moscow. As Putin was finishing his speech, the broadcast was suddenly cut off and state television showed patriotic songs. The Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov blamed a “technical failure” for the cutoff.

• A World Food Programme (WFP) official said on Friday that food supply chains in Ukraine were collapsing, with a portion of infrastructure destroyed and many grocery stores and warehouses now empty. Jakob Kern, WFP emergency coordinator for the Ukraine crisis, also expressed concern about the situation in “encircled cities” such as Mariupol, saying supplies were running out and its convoys had not yet been able to enter the city.

• Pope Francis has denounced the “perverse abuse of power” on display in Russia’s war in Ukraine and called for aid to Ukrainians, whom he said had been attacked in their “identity, history and tradition” and were “defending their land”. Francis’s comments were some of his strongest yet in asserting Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign state and to defend itself against Russia’s invasion.

The US president, Joe Biden, described to China’s president, Xi Jinping, in a phone call today “implications and consequences” if Beijing provides material support to Russia as it attacks Ukrainian cities and civilians, the White House said.

In a statement, the White House said the phone call between the Chinese and American leaders, which lasted nearly two hours, focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

President Biden outlined the views of the United States and our Allies and partners on this crisis. President Biden detailed our efforts to prevent and then respond to the invasion, including by imposing costs on Russia.

He described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians.

The President underscored his support for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.

An earlier statement from the Chinese foreign ministry quoted Xi as telling Biden that conflicts and confrontations were in no-one’s interests.

According to the ministry, Xi said:

The top priorities now are to continue dialogue and negotiations, avoid civilian casualties, prevent a humanitarian crisis, cease fighting and end the war as soon as possible.

Chinese state media quoted Xi saying in the call:

The Ukraine crisis is something that we don’t want to see.

The former UK prime minister, David Cameron, is driving a small lorry full of supplies for Ukrainian refugees to the country’s border with Poland.

Cameron announced the trip on Twitter, where he said he had been volunteering for two years at a food project in west Oxfordshire called the Chippy Larder.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president and a member of the negotiating team, has accused Russian statements on peace talks of attempting “to provoke tension in the media”.

“Our positions are unchanged,” he tweeted today. “Ceasefire, withdrawal of troops & strong security guarantees with concrete formulas.”

Podolyak’s comments come after a member of Russia’s negotiating team, Vladimir Medinsky, said Moscow and Kyiv are most aligned on Ukraine’s neutrality and giving up on joining Nato.

Medinsky said Moscow and Kyiv are “halfway there” in agreeing on the issue of Ukraine’s demilitarisation, adding that both sides were discussing nuances of security guarantees should Ukraine no longer attempt to join the Nato alliance, the Interfax news agency reported.

Residents of Ukraine’s besieged city of Mariupol have resorted to escaping on foot as official evacuation efforts have mostly failed due to ongoing shelling by Russian forces, the region’s governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

Speaking on national television, Kyrylenko said around 35,000 had managed to leave the city in recent days, many leaving on foot or in convoys of private cars, Reuters reports.

The way out of blockaded Mariupol begins with residents getting out either on foot or in their own transport.

Some cars that were leaving Mariupol did not have enough fuel to reach the nearest villages or towns, he said.

Near-constant shelling by Russian forces was preventing authorities from opening humanitarian corridors to supply aid and food to the city and to evacuate women, children and those most in need, Kyrylenko said.

Read our latest report on the situation in Mariupol:

Fighting has reached the centre of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, according to reports.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko told the BBC:

Yes, they were really active today. Tanks and machine gun battles continue. Everybody is hiding in bunkers.

More than 80% of residential buildings in Mariupol are either damaged or destroyed, he added, and 30% of them cannot be restored.

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

Earlier today, the Russian defence ministry said Russian forces were “tightening the noose” around the city of Mariupol, adding that fighting was ongoing in the city centre.

In a one-hour call between the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, today, Macron said he was “extremely concerned” about the situation in Mariupol, the French presidential office said.

It is almost 7.30pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand now:

• Russian missiles struck an aircraft repair plant in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, 50 miles from the border with Poland and a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Ukrainians. Blasts were heard at about 6am on Friday, preceded by the sound of air raid sirens, as a mushroom-shaped plume of smoke could be seen rising in the sky.

• Russia’s bombardment in the east of Ukraine continued on Friday. In the streets of Mariupol, where 350,000 civilians have been stranded with little food or water, Russia’s armed forces were “tightening the noose” around the city, a spokesperson for the Russian defence ministry said. In the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s state emergency service said a multi-storey teaching building had been shelled on Friday morning, killing one person, wounding 11 and trapping one other in the rubble.

• Hundreds of people remain buried under the rubble of a theatre in the devastated city of Mariupol that was hit by a Russian airstrike on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. In his latest video address, Zelenskiy said that more than 130 people have been rescued so far but officials have said rescue efforts had been hindered by the complete breakdown of social services in the city and fears of future Russian attacks.

• Kyiv city administration said today that 222 people have been killed in the Ukrainian capital since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, including 60 civilians and four children. In a statement, it said a further 889 people have been wounded, including 241 civilians and 18 children, in the capital. The Guardian has not been able to verify these figures.

• Russian forces are “holding captive” a Ukrainian journalist, Victoria Roshchyna, according to the Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske. In a statement, Hromadske said they believe Roshchyna was detained by the Russian FSB around 15 March.

• Chinese president Xi Jinping told his US counterpart Joe Biden on Friday that conflicts and confrontations such as the events unfolding in Ukraine are in no one’s interests, according to Chinese state media. “The Ukraine crisis is something that we don’t want to see,” Xi was quoted by Chinese media as saying to the US president.

• Vladimir Putin praised Russian “unity” over what the Kremlin is calling its special operation in Ukraine during a rare public speech at the national stadium in Moscow. As Putin was finishing his speech, the broadcast was suddenly cut off and state television showed patriotic songs. The Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov blamed a “technical failure” for the cutoff.

• A World Food Programme (WFP) official said on Friday that food supply chains in Ukraine were collapsing, with a portion of infrastructure destroyed and many grocery stores and warehouses now empty. Jakob Kern, WFP emergency coordinator for the Ukraine crisis, also expressed concern about the situation in “encircled cities” such as Mariupol, saying supplies were running out and its convoys had not yet been able to enter the city.

• Pope Francis has denounced the “perverse abuse of power” on display in Russia’s war in Ukraine and called for aid to Ukrainians, whom he said had been attacked in their “identity, history and tradition” and were “defending their land”. Francis’s comments were some of his strongest yet in asserting Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign state and to defend itself against Russia’s invasion.

Hello everyone. I’m Léonie Chao-Fong and I’ll continue to bring you all the latest developments on the war in Ukraine today. Feel free to drop me a message if you have anything to flag, you can reach me on Twitter or via email.