Russia Ukraine Crisis: Ukraine, Russia Agree On Humanitarian Corridors For Evacuation: 10 Facts

The agreement was the only tangible progress from a second round of talks between Moscow and Kyiv, according to an adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, and it was not immediately clear how they would work. A Russian negotiator, nationalist lawmaker Leonid Slutsky, confirmed the initiative and said it would be implemented soon.

Putin again said Russia was rooting out “neo-Nazis”, adding during the televised opening of a national security council meeting that he “will never give up on (his) conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people”.

He earlier told French President Emmanuel Macron that Moscow “intends to continue the uncompromising fight against militants of nationalist armed groups”, according to a Kremlin account of their call.

Zelensky has repeated a call to the West to up its military assistance, saying “If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!” Zelensky told a news conference. “If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next,” he said, adding that direct talks with Putin were “the only way to stop this war”.

Thirty-three people died Thursday when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block, in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, authorities said.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Western politicians of considering nuclear war. “I would like to point out that it’s in the heads of Western politicians that the idea of a nuclear war is spinning constantly, and not in the heads of Russians,” Mr Lavrov told Russian and foreign media.

On the ground, Russian forces have taken the Black Sea port of Kherson in southern Ukraine, the first major city to fall after a string of setbacks for Moscow. They also pound and encircle the strategic port city of Mariupol, which is without water or electricity.

The UN has opened a probe into alleged war crimes, as the Russian military bombards cities in Ukraine with shells and missiles, forcing civilians to take shelter in basements.

The EU is expected to rapidly approve a protection mechanism for war refugees fleeing Ukraine — so far numbered at one million — and to also set up a humanitarian hub in Romania, officials said.

The moves by the European Union came in parallel to its muscular sanctions on Russia imposed in successive waves over the course of the invasion, now in its eighth day.