Russia-Ukraine war: Moscow promises humanitarian corridors; US to send Patriot missiles to Poland – live

Russia has warned that it is working on a broad response to western sanctions that it claimed would be ‘swift’ and felt in the most sensitive areas, reports Reuters.

“Russia’s reaction will be swift, thoughtful and sensitive for those it addresses,” Dmitry Birichevsky, the director of the foreign ministry’s department for economic cooperation, said, according to the RIA news agency.

Russia has again claimed it will provide humanitarian corridors today for Ukrainians fleeing Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol, saying forces would “observe a regime of silence” from 9am in Ukraine (7am GMT).

It comes as the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since world war two surpassed two million.

However, as the Guardian’s Julian Borger and Patrick Wintour report, authorities in Kyiv have previously accused Moscow of shelling a refugee corridor intended for residents trying to escape Mariupol. It was also unclear whether the proposed routes would pass through Russia or Belarus, conditions previously opposed by the Ukrainian government.

“The enemy has launched an attack heading exactly at the humanitarian corridor,” the Ukrainian defence ministry said on Facebook on Tuesday, adding that the Russian army “did not let children, women and elderly people leave the city”. The International Committee of the Red Cross said many Mariupol residents face an “apocalyptic” situation, with no water, power or heating.

Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Olga Stefanishyna, said 5,000 civilians were evacuated from the Sumy region yesterday, where 21 people were killed in airstrikes.

Hi, I will be looking after the liveblog for the next few hours. Please get in touch with any tips or suggestions: miranda.bryant@guardian.co.uk

Good morning to our readers who are just tuning in. We’ve been tracking the latest from Ukraine overnight as the situation continues to unfold.

Here are the main developments from the past few hours:

• Ukrainians looking to escape shelling could have a chance to evacuate after Russian forces said they will still firing from 10am Moscow time to provide humanitarian corridors out of Kyiv and four other cities. Several previous ceasefire promises have not been kept, however.
• The UK Ministry of Defence says in its latest update that Russia is struggling to breakthrough to the north of Kyiv while Ukrainian defence forces continue to shoot down Russian aircraft.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency has lost contact with safeguard monitoring systems at Chernobyl and has expressed concern about the welfare of over 200 workers and guards at the facility.
• The US government has dismissed as “untenable” a suggestion by Poland that it could make 29 of its Soviet-era MIG fighter jets available to the Americans to help defend Ukraine.
• But the US will be sending two Patriot anti-missile batteries stationed in Europe to Poland to bolster its defences against attack.
• Russia’s military is solving some of its logistical problems and could launch an attack on Kyiv within days, according to experts.
• Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been described as a hero by the British press after he invoked the fight against Nazism in an impassioned video address to MPs to do more to help protect his country.
• Ukraine accused Russia of breaking a ceasefire agreement, by shelling a route intended to allow civilians to escape the besieged city of Mariupol. Residents of the port city are living without heat, water, sanitary systems or phones.
• The US is banning imports of Russian oil “to inflict further pain on Vladimir Putin”, Joe Biden has said. The EU has not joined the ban, but the British government promised to phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year.
• Russia’s war in Ukraine is being bolstered by $285m in daily oil payments from European countries, a thinktank has found.
• Venezuela has released at least two Americans from jail in an apparent goodwill gesture toward the Biden administration following a visit to Caracas by a high-level US delegation.
• Chinese president Xi Jinping called for “maximum restraint” in Ukraine overnight and said China is “pained to see the flames of war reignited in Europe” in his strongest statement to date on the conflict.

The British papers have lapped up Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s speech to the House of Commons yesterday in which the Ukrainian president deliberately invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill to act as a rallying cry for more help for his embattled nation.

My colleague Martin Farrer has had a look at the front pages and has this story:

And if you want a bit of a reminder of what Zelenskiy said, here’s a video of his address:

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov will travel to Turkey on Wednesday for talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, Reuters reports.

The diplomats will meet at the resort city of Antalya after repeated offers by Turkey to host talks and mediate between the two sides.

The New York Times will have no reporters on the ground in Russia for the first time in a century after the news organisation joined those pulling out of the country.

Russian authorities made reporting from the country impossible when it recently criminalised the act of describing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “war” with those who commit the offence facing up to 15 years in prison.

As a result Russian media outlets have been forced to close, while global news organisations have pulled out their teams owing to the risk of arrest.

Former NYT Moscow bureau chief, Neil MacFarquhar, said on social media Russia has always been considered a “important country, an important story” but the recent turn. had “just killed off that long tradition”.

“We’ve had reporters there continuously since 1921, with one or two short interruptions due to visa hiccoughs. Not Stalin, not the Cold War, nothing drove us out,” MacFarquhar said.

Some images from the evacuation of Sumy:

Regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyy said a humanitarian corridor out of the besieged Ukrainian city of Sumy will continue to function on Wednesday, Reuters reports.

About 5,000 people rode buses out of the northeastern city on Tuesday after Moscow and Kyiv agreed on the corridor.

Zhyvytskyy said about 1,000 cars were also able to leave, moving towards the city of Poltava.

The successful evacuation comes days after New York Times reporters witnessed a Russian mortar strike in the city of Irpin that killed four people, including a mother and her teenage son and eight-year-old daughter, as they attempted to flee to safety in Kyiv.

The Ukrainian general staff says it continues to hold Kyiv despite attacks by Russian forces overnight while fighting continues across the country.

The latest update says there is fighting in the north and north-west with “combat operations” taking place in Polisky and Volyn, along Ukraine’s border. It also says there is also fighting in the settlements of Nizhyn, Ivanytsia, Trostyanets and also in the city of Chernihiv.

In the south it says operations are continuing to secure “airports and critical infrastructure”, while the Ukrainian airforce is targeting artillery shelling civilian ares while providing air cover.

The update also alleges a propaganda campaign is underway to “aimed at discrediting the military and political leadership of our state” and that Russian forces have taken up firing positions next to hospitals in Chernihiv.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says it has lost contact with Chernobyl nuclear data systems as the plant is no longer transmitting to the UN’s atomic watchdog.

In a statement on Tuesday, IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said “remote data transmission from safeguards monitoring systems installed at the Chernobyl NPP had been lost,” and that the agency was currently “looking into the status of safeguards monitoring systems in other locations in Ukraine”.

Grossi also raised concerns about the well-being of 210 technical personnel and guards at the plant when Russian forces seized control two weeks ago.

The agency could only reach the plant by email and the staff had not been rotated out, which is “crucial for nuclear safety”.

“I’m deeply concerned about the difficult and stressful situation facing staff at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant and the potential risks this entails for nuclear safety. I call on the forces in effective control of the site to urgently facilitate the safe rotation of personnel there,” Grossi said.

Sumy mayor Dmytro Zhyvytskyi says one person has been killed, fourteen missing and others missing following shelling in Okhtyr overnight.

Posting photos of the damage to social media, he reported that civilian infrastructure had been targeted including a railway station, executive committee building, local department stores and shops.

Zhyvytskyi said the city is without power, water and has experienced disruption to its sewerage system.

Humanitarian corridors from Sumy were opened overnight to allow residents caught in the fighting to flee.

It is a new morning in Kyiv but residents in the Ukrainian capital have been greeted with air raid sirens and explosions.

Any strike against supply lines from Nato members supporting Ukraine with arms and ammunition will be considered an escalation of the conflict, CBC News reports.

Nato’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday that while supply lines inside Ukraine were vulnerable to attack, those leading up to the border fell under the protection of the alliance.

“An attack on Nato territory, on Nato forces, Nato capabilities, that would be an attack on Nato,” Stoltenberg said.

There have been concern among some in US intelligence services that Russia may attempt to stem the flow of support to Ukraine with an airstrike or long-range artillery.

Article 5 of Nato’s founding treaty states that an attack on one member state is an attack on all 30 members.

Hello – I’m Royce Kurmelovs and welcome to our rolling coverage of the Ukraine-Russia war.

Here are the main developments in the past few hours:

• The US government has dismissed as “untenable” a suggestion by Poland that it could make 29 of its Soviet-era MIG fighter jets available to the Americans to help defend Ukraine.
• But the US will be sending two Patriot anti-missile batteries stationed in Europe to Poland to bolster its defences against attack.
• Russian forces say they will stop firing starting 10 am Moscow time on Wednesday and are ready to provide human corridors so civilians can evacuate Kyiv and four other cities.
• Russia’s military is solving some of its logistical problems and could launch an attack on Kyiv within days, according to experts.
• Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been described as a hero by the British press after he invoked the fight against Nazism in an impassioned video address to MPs to do more to help protect his country.
• Ukraine accused Russia of breaking a ceasefire agreement, by shelling a route intended to allow civilians to escape the besieged city of Mariupol. Residents of the port city are living without heat, water, sanitary systems or phones.
• The US is banning imports of Russian oil “to inflict further pain on Vladimir Putin”, Joe Biden has said. The EU has not joined the ban, but the British government promised to phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year.
• Russia’s war in Ukraine is being bolstered by $285m in daily oil payments from European countries, a thinktank has found.
• Venezuela has released at least two Americans from jail in an apparent goodwill gesture toward the Biden administration following a visit to Caracas by a high-level US delegation.
• Chinese president Xi Jinping called for “maximum restraint” in Ukraine overnight and said China is “pained to see the flames of war reignited in Europe” in his strongest statement to date on the conflict.