President Biden on Saturday signed legislation to support Ukraine with another $40 billion in US assistance as the Russian invasion approaches its fourth month.

Russian forces bombarded areas of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region from land and air yesterday, destroying houses in residential districts and killing a number of civilians, Ukrainian officials said.

Russia's Gazprom (GAZP.MM) has informed Finland it will halt flows of natural gas from Saturday morning, Gasum said on Friday, after the Finnish state-owned gas wholesaler refused to pay its Russian supplier in roubles.

Finland and Sweden formally applied to join the NATO alliance on Wednesday, a decision spurred by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but face objections from Turkey to an accession process that is expected to take only a few weeks.

The first Russian soldier on trial in Ukraine for war crimes during Moscow's invasion pleaded guilty on Wednesday, facing possible life imprisonment in Kyiv.

French President Emmanuel Macron told his Ukrainian counterpart on Tuesday that French arms deliveries to Ukraine would intensify in coming days and said France was ready to respond to additional demands for help, the Elysee said.

More than 250 Ukrainian fighters surrendered to Russian forces at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol and Kyiv said yesterday it had ordered its full garrison to evacuate, bringing an apparent end to the bloodiest battle in Europe for decades.

Western countries have been ramping up weapons and ammunition shipments to Ukraine as Kyiv fights off a Russian invasion, but arms trade experts warn some of the lethal assistance could end up falling into the wrong hands.

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday warned Finland and Sweden to expect a “response” for applying to join Nato as Ukrainian troops reached border after pushing Russian forces back from the northeastern city of Kharkiv.

Russia has lost around a third of the ground forces it deployed to Ukraine and its offensive in the Donbas region “has lost momentum and fallen significantly behind schedule”, British military intelligence said yesterday.

The war in Ukraine could reach a “breaking point” by August and end in defeat for Russia before the end of the year, Kyiv’s head of military intelligence said yesterday, as fierce fighting raged in Ukraine’s east, slowing down a hoped-for Russian advance.

The Group of Seven leading economies warned Saturday that the war in Ukraine is stoking a global food and energy crisis that threatens poor countries, and urgent measures are needed to unblock stores of grain that Russia is preventing from leaving Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto on Saturday that ditching neutrality and joining NATO would be a mistake that could damage relations between their two countries, the Kremlin said.

Journalists packed a small courtroom in Kyiv for the trial of a captured Russian soldier accused of killing a Ukrainian civilian in the early days of the war — the first of dozens of war crimes cases that Ukraine’s top prosecutor said her office is pursuing.

Leading democracies yesterday pledged unwavering support for Ukraine in its war with Russia while the European Union promised to hike military support for Kyiv by more than half a billion dollars.

Ukrainian forces destroyed parts of a Russian armoured column as it tried to cross a river in the Donbas region, video from Ukraine’s military showed yesterday, as Moscow appeared to be refocusing its assault in the east after a new pushback by Kyiv.

Finland must apply to join the Nato military alliance “without delay”, its president and prime minister said yesterday, in a historic policy shift triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces reported battlefield gains yesterday in a counterattack that could signal a shift in the momentum of the war, while Kyiv shut gas flows on a route through Russian-held territory, raising the spectre of an energy crisis in Europe.

Thousands more civilians have been killed in Ukraine during nearly 11 weeks of war there than the official UN death toll of 3,381, the head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission for the country said yesterday.

The World Health Organization's European chief said on Tuesday that at least 3,000 people had died in Ukraine since Russia's invasion in February because they had been unable to access treatments for chronic diseases.