French companies including carmaker Renault (RENA.PA) and retailer Auchan must leave the Russian market, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told French lawmakers on Wednesday.

A veteran Kremlin envoy has resigned and left Russia with no intention to return, a source said on Wednesday, the first senior official reported to have quit since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine a month ago.

One month of war, still defiant. With its government still standing and its outnumbered troops battling Russian forces to bloody stalemates in multiple places, Ukraine is scarred, wounded, mourning its dead but far from beaten as it braces for a second month of bombing, combat, casualties and resistance.

Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, a co-winner of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, said on Tuesday he would donate his Nobel medal to be auctioned to raise funds for Ukrainian refugees.

Talks between Ukraine and Russia are confrontational but moving forward, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday, as the West plans to announce more sanctions against the Kremlin amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.

US President Joe Biden said Monday that India was an exception among Washington’s allies with its “shaky” response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday called on Pope Francis to mediate in his country’s conflict with Russia to help alleviate human suffering, nearly one month into Moscow’s invasion.

Zhanna Agalakova, until her resignation this month a journalist with Russia's state-controlled Channel One broadcaster, said on Tuesday she quit in protest at the war being waged by Russia in Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden has said only India among the Quad group of countries was "somewhat shaky" in acting against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, as India tries to balance its ties with Russia and the West.

He survived the Nazi Buchenwald concentration camp during World War II. He survived the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp in the same war. And the Bergen-Belsen camp.

Russian forces advancing on the Ukraine capital Kyiv from the northeast have stalled, British intelligence said yesterday, as Ukraine rejected Russian calls for defenders to lay down their arms in the besieged city of Mariupol.

China’s ambassador to the US said Sunday his country was not sending weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine, but he did not definitively rule out the possibility Beijing might do so in the future.

A Moscow court on Monday labelled Meta Platforms Inc an "extremist organisation", but said the decision would not apply to its WhatsApp messenger service, focusing its ire on the company's already banned Facebook and Instagram social networks.

Shelling hit a Kyiv shopping centre late on Sunday, killing at least eight people, wrecking nearby buildings and leaving smoking piles of rubble and the twisted wreckage of burned-out cars spread over several hundred metres.

Ukraine today rejected Russian calls to surrender the port city of Mariupol, where residents are besieged with little food, water and power in a humanitarian crisis that is increasing pressure on European leaders to toughen sanctions on Moscow.

Ukrainian authorities yesterday said that Russia had bombed a school sheltering 400 people in the besieged port of Mariupol, as Moscow claimed that it had again fired hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, the second time it had used the next-generation weapon on its neighbour.

Russia says for a second day in a row it has fired its newest hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, destroying a fuel storage site in Mykolaiv region. Hypersonic missiles travel faster than the speed of sound and can manoeuvre mid-flight, making them hard to track and intercept.

The United States has informally raised with Turkey the unlikely possibility of sending its Russian-made S-400 missile defense systems to Ukraine to help it fight invading Russian forces, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

Turkey on Sunday said Russia and Ukraine made progress on their negotiations to halt the invasion and the two warring sides were close to an agreement.

Ten million people - more than a quarter of the population - have now fled their homes in Ukraine due to Russia's "devastating" war, the United Nations refugees chief said Sunday.