Ukraine

In the hamlet of Dmytrivka to the west of the capital, smoke was still rising from the wrecks of tanks and the bodies of at least eight Russian soldiers lay in the streets, Reuters correspondents saw.

"From one side we were hearing the tanks shooting at us, and from the area of Bucha was a massive mortar shelling," said resident Leonid Vereshchagin, a business executive, referring to a town to the north.

The decision to scale back operations around the capital, Kyiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv is the first sign of tangible progress.

But it is unclear how extensive any reduction in military activity might be, and Ukraine remains sceptical.

Russia had already refocused its campaign on Ukraine's eastern regions.

It has suffered a series of setbacks to the north-west of the capital, Kyiv, and is also seeking to capture a land corridor which stretches along the south coast to the Russian border.

Russia is housing an estimated 5,000 at a temporary camp in Bezimenne, east of Mariupol, seen in satellite images.

Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 40,000 had been moved from Ukraine to Russian-held territory without any coordination with Kyiv.

A Mariupol refugee, now in Russia, said: "All of us were taken forcibly".

Some Ukrainian officials describe Russia's actions as "deportations" to "filtration camps" - an echo of Russia's war in Chechnya, when thousands of Chechens were brutally interrogated in makeshift camps and many disappeared.

Lviv, just 60 kilometres from the Polish border, has so far escaped the heavy bombardment and fighting that has devastated some Ukrainian cities closer to Russia since Moscow launched its invasion on 24 February.

Governor Maksym Kozytskyy said five people had been wounded after two rockets hit a fuel depot and two others later hit a military factory. Earlier he reported powerful explosions in Lviv's eastern outskirts from the strikes.

"Stay in shelters! Do not go out into the streets!," he warned after the first strike.

As day broke on Monday, firefighters were putting out small blazes around the smouldering carcass of a building in the shopping centre car park in the Podil district of the city and looking for possible survivors.

The force of the explosion late on Sunday obliterated one structure in the shopping centre car park and gutted an adjacent 10-storey building, shattering windows in the surrounding residential tower blocks.

He clutches a small yellow toy tractor but says nothing as specialist nurses monitor his condition. The Russian shell that blasted shrapnel into his belly also badly wounded his parents and grandparents as they tried to flee Mariupol. A victim of Putin's war and he's not yet three years old.

In the next bed to Artem lies 15-year-old Masha, also from near Mariupol. Her right leg was amputated after it was torn apart by the blast from a Russian shell last Tuesday.

If confirmed it would be Russia's first use in this war of the Kinzhal, or Dagger, ballistic missile launched from the air, most likely by a MiG-31 warplane.

What are hypersonic missiles?

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly highlighted Russia's investment in hypersonic missiles, which can travel at more than five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5.

Zelensky said Ukraine had always offered solutions for peace and wanted meaningful and honest negotiations on peace and security, without delay.

"I want everyone to hear me now, especially in Moscow. The time has come for a meeting, it is time to talk," he said in a video address released in the early hours of Saturday.

"The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia's losses will be such that it will take you several generations to recover."

"Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people," Zelensky said in his virtual address before showing video containing graphic images of death and destruction in Ukraine that ended with "close the sky over Ukraine."

Zelensky continued his push for the imposition of a no-fly zone over Ukraine and asked for more planes and defence systems to respond to a Russian invasion launched last month that has caused large-scale destruction in his country and has unleashed a wave of refugees. He also called for more economic sanctions against Russia.

The prime ministers of Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic met Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday evening as a curfew began in Kyiv.

Afterwards, the Czech leader told Ukrainians that they are "not alone".

The group are the first Western leaders to visit Ukraine since Russia invaded.

"We admire your brave fight," Petr Fiala wrote in a tweet. "We know that you're also fighting for our lives. You're not alone, our countries stand by your side."