Nearly a thousand buildings destroyed in Kharkiv – emergency services
More now on the situation in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which has been under Russian attack.
Almost a thousand buildings have been destroyed there as a result of Russian shelling, Ukraine’s state emergency service has said.
Most of these are residential buildings, the SES said.
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Russian forces have been relentlessly shelling Kharkiv, which lies just 30 miles (50km) from the border with Russia, for more than three weeks.
At least 500 civilians have been killed there, Ukrainian officials say.
Nigerian student dies weeks after fleeing Ukraine
One of the Nigerian students who fled the war in Ukraine has died in his hometown of Sokoto in northern Nigeria.
It’s not yet clear what exactly caused the death of Huzaifa Habibu.
His father, Habibu Halilu Modaci, told the BBC that he was taken to hospital after complaining of discomfort and loss of appetite.
The 22-year-old student, who was studying medicine in Ukraine, was due to graduate next year and had arrived back in Nigeria barely two weeks ago.
It was his first time returning home in three years.
Mr Modaci said that his son had narrated the horrors of the war and the scramble to flee Ukraine.
Nigeria has evacuated more than 1,500 of its students from Ukraine following the Russian invasion last month.
But there are around 100 more still trapped in the city of Kherson.
In Ukraine: Impossible choices for surrogate mothers and parents
More than 2,000 children are born through surrogacy every year in Ukraine, the majority to foreign couples.
The country has around 50 reproductive clinics and many agencies and middle-men who match couples – known as “intended parents” – to surrogates.
But the war has thrown the lives of these surrogate mothers, their babies, and their intended parents – into uncertainty and chaos.
Nastya – a surrogate pregnant with twins – was only weeks from her due date when the war broke out. She went into labour a few days later.
“We spent the entire time in the hospital in a bomb shelter,” she told the BBC.
Kharkiv was under heavy bombardment and the hospital’s basement was packed from wall to wall with mattresses and baby cribs.
Nastya camped out in a storage room with her two other children, sleeping on sofa cushions on the floor, underneath shelves piled high with files and paperwork.
She delivered two healthy baby boys, but their parents couldn’t travel to Ukraine to collect them.
Instead, Nastya, her two sons, and the newborn twins had to travel across Ukraine to reach the border, risking their safety, before she could deliver them to their parents.
‘Children are dying from dehydration’ – Mariupol evacuee
Victoria, 27, who managed to escape from the besieged southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, tells 5 Live Breakfast how she left family behind as she fled to a village about 20km (12.5 miles) away.
“My city is absolutely destroyed,” she says, her voice trembling as she describes hearing the daily shelling of Russian attacks.
“People stay in the basement, but that isn’t safe. They are bombing so hard basements are being destroyed.”
She says many people don’t have access to food and water.
“Three children I know died of dehydration. It is the 21st Century and children are dying from dehydration in my city. They are starving now.”
Victoria adds that she was unable to help other family members leave Mariupol and is desperate to “take them out”.
“I will stay in Ukraine and try and save my family in Mariupol. Mariupol is my life, I don’t understand why I should leave my city, my country because of Russia.”
Amphibious attack on Odesa unlikely – Rusi expert
Looking ahead now to which fronts may next become critical in the war, Dr Sidharth Kaushal, sea power research fellow at defence think tank Royal United Services Institute, says a possible attack from the water on the strategic port city of Odesa is unlikely because of the limited capabilities Russia has in the region.
He says such an assault would only really work in tandem with a ground advance – but as ground forces have not progressed past Mykolaiv in the west, he says he would expect an amphibious assault to be “relatively unlikely in the near term”.
He adds Russia could be using their sea force as a kind of “feint”, which forces the Ukrainians to commit forces to the defence of Odesa and prevent them from using these forces elsewhere like in Mykolaiv.
On the question of whether Russia might use chemical weapons in Ukraine, he says they still have conventional weapons “with which to inflict pretty substantial amounts of pain on the Ukrainian society”.
He feels the use of chemical weapons is unnecessary for the Russians right now, though it can’t be ruled out in future.
Russian tank factory ‘suspends operations’ – Ukrainian intelligence
Ukrainian military are reporting that a company that produces and repairs Russian tanks has suspended work at its plant in the central Russian region of Chelyabinsk due to a shortage of imported parts.
In a statement posted to Facebook, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reports that manufacturer Uralvagonzavod has had to pause production at the facility “due to the lack of receipts of foreign-made components”.
Ukrainian military information and consultancy company Defense Express reports that Uralvagonzavod provides the only plant that carries out the assembly of tanks.
It goes on to report that the manufacturer routinely uses Western components.
There are no reports referring to the Uralvagonzavod facility in Russian media and the BBC has not been able to confirm the information in the Ukrainian statement.
Russian forces ‘stalled in place’ – UK defence ministry
Russian forces appeared to be ‘stalled in place’, due to achieving limited gains, the UK’s ministry of defence said in its latest update that.
But in a Twitter post, it added Ukrainian forces continued to “repulse” Russian attempts to take over the southern port city of Mariupol – one of the most fiercely contested cities in the war so far.
