As it happened: US intervention would mean WW3

@kahlilgreeneCopyright: @kahlilgreene

White House officials hosted a private Zoom briefing for about 30 influential TikTok creators to keep them informed of the latest US messaging regarding Ukraine, according to the Washington Post.

The briefing was conducted by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and National Security Council adviser Matt Miller. Several of the social media stars have since gone on to post about Ukraine.

The topic included the US "strategic goals in the region", according to the Post, such as how the US would respond to a Russian nuclear escalation and how US aid dollars are being spent to help Ukraine.

TikTok has been widely embraced by the Biden administration as a way to reach younger Americans who get much of their news from social media.

IntelliasCopyright: Intellias

Olha Svyripa was woken up at 05:30 on 24 February to what she described as "the warmest hug I ever had from my husband".

"He said 'please wake up, it's begun'."

Two hours later, she was crammed into a small van with her husband, her best friend and four strangers, to begin what turned into an 18-hour journey from Kyiv to the relative safety of Rivne, in the west of Ukraine.

"We packed the most important stuff - documents, laptops, chargers. My husband filled my backpack with books and said: 'It might be heavy but will protect you in case of shelling'."

Olha's laptop was important because she, like many Ukrainians, wanted to carry on working despite the complete upheaval of her life and the dreadful circumstances she found herself in.

Read more about Olha's story here.

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Guatemala has received its first arrivals on Friday of Ukrainian refugees, according to a Reuters report.

Eight Ukrainians were the first to arrive in the Central American country for "humanitarian reasons". A further 10 Ukrainians were expected to arrive later in the day, Reuters quoted officials as saying.

It is unclear how many may have arrived privately to Guatemala since the Russian attacks onUkraine began.

Guatemala announced its decision to throw open its doors to Ukrainian war refugees on 6 March, when President Alejandro Giammattei said they would be "assured refuge" in the country.

It is now slightly past 06:00 in Kyiv, and air raid sirens have blared across more than 15 regions and multiple cities in Ukraine, BBC Ukrainian has reported.

They have sounded in the capital Kyiv, along with key cities like Odesa in the south, Sumy in the north, Kharkiv in the east and Dnipro in the south-east.

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

More humanitarian corridors have been agreed for the embattled northeastern city of Sumy on Saturday morning, said Sumy Regional Military Administration Dmitry Zhyvytsky in a post on Telegram.

According to Zhyvytsky, evacuation efforts starting at 09:00 local time (07:00 GMT) will see vehicles departing from six destinations around the region.

All of the convoys are headed to the central city of Poltava, and are expected to arrive between 13:00 to 14:00.

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As Ukraine enters its 17th day under Russian invasion, Nato has said that it will be sending troops to Norway on Monday 14 March.

Some 30,000 troops, 200 aircraft and 50 vessels from 27 nations are expected to take part in the Cold Response 2022 exercise, the largest exercise involving Nato troops this year.

Starting on 14 March, the manoeuvres will enable western nations to hone their combat skills in Norway's cold climate, including in the Arctic, on the ground, at sea and in the skies.

The exercise will be held a few hundred kilometres from the Russian border. While it was planned long before Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, it now has added significance because of the war.

Norway's Defence Minister Odd Roger Enoksen said: "This exercise is extremely important for the security of Norway and its allies. We will practice an allied reinforcement of Norway".

The exercise is expected to come to an end on 1 April.

With fierce fighting in cities along Ukraine’s south coast, the key city of Odesa is preparing its defences.

Russian landing craft have been seen off the coast, and several aircraft have been reportedly shot down.

Odesa is seen as an important target, both strategic and symbolic.

The BBC has obtained footage of the volunteers preparing to defend the city, just 50km (30 miles) from the border with Moldova.

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Ukraine has told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that technicians have begun efforts to restore the external power supply to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said the site currently occupied by Russian troops was taken off the power grid. They later claimed that the Russians were preparing a "terrorist attack" that had been thwarted.

Ukraine told the IAEA, the UN's nuclear energy watchdog, that work on Thursday evening successfully prepared one section, but that failures persist due to damage in other places.

The agency said the work was continuing "despite the difficult situation outside" the former Soviet power plant, the site of a nuclear disaster in 1986.

BBCCopyright: BBC

Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine, is now firmly in the sights of the Russian army.

Moscow's troops invaded from the nearby Crimea peninsula and have had more success in taking territory in this region than Russian forces elsewhere in Ukraine.

And now reports from the city indicate that Russian forces have started to shell the city again.

As the Russians work their way west towards the city people are starting to flee and the hospitals are filling with the injured.

But Anastasia has decided to stay, sending her one-year-old daughter and her mother away to safety.

"I'm a mum of my baby. But I have to help because I know how to do it," the former army captain told the BBC.

Ukrainian forces have, for more than a week now, defended the city.

But Governor Vitaliy Kim warns this is not a time to celebrate prematurely. "We are winning this fight, but not this war," he says.

Read more about the defence of Mykolaiv here.

BBCCopyright: BBC

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Bulgarian President Rumen Radev has said his country could host negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.

Bulgarian media quoted President Radev saying that "Bulgaria can legitmately claim to be a place for such talks, but this should be done in coordination with the European Union."

Radev added: "We are members of the EU and we should strive for a unified European solution, a unified European approach."

On Friday, UK Minister of State for Europe and North America James Cleverly was in Bulgaria to discuss with his counterparts the crisis in Ukraine. Cleverly said the UK and Bulgaria - as Nato allies - oppose Russia's "unprovoked attack" on Ukraine.

He added that Bulgaria was "one of the first countries to close its skies to Russian aeroplanes".

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

Photos taken by Reuters apparently show a drone that has been rigged to drop petrol-filled bottles onto invading Russian troops.

The four-blade device was apparently developed by the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces. Its use comes about two weeks after the government called for private owners to donate their drones to be outfitted for military purposes.

It's unclear how the petrol in the Molotov cocktail bottle of Chernihivske beer - seen in the photo - is meant to be ignited.

But the pictures show that as it falls, the bottle stays upright, in an apparent effort to keep the liquid from pouring out as it drops onto its target.

Read more about Molotov cocktails in Ukraine here

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

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Social media channels and private messaging groups are being used in Russia to recruit a new brigade of mercenaries to fight in Ukraine alongside the army, the BBC has learned.

The BBC has spoken to a serving mercenary and a former fighter with close links to one of Russia's leading mercenary organisations, who have shared details of the recruitment campaign.

Read more of our investigation here.

Earlier on we reported on a video address given by Ukraine's deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk.

The deputy prime minister said that shelling had prevented evacuations from Mariupol, where a maternity hospital was bombed this week, and the capital Kyiv.

But she said some planned evacuations had been successful, including 1,000 people who were escorted from the village of Vorzel in the Kyiv region.

Vereshchuk said that there will be a further attempt to evacuate people from Mariupol on Saturday. "Tomorrow we will do it again in front of the whole world", she said.

She added a humanitarian cargo should be delivered to Mariupol, and on the way back people will have the opportunity of being evacuated.

Several attempts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol failed earlier this week after agreements for temporary pauses in fighting were broken.

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Ukrainian families are grieving the deaths of the country's fallen soldiers. The bodies of the first victims of the Ukraine-Russia war are being laid to rest.

The BBC's Fergal Keane reports.

In the last half hour, air raid sirens have gone off in the capital city and in Zhytomyr, to its west, warning residents to seek shelter underground.

Reporters on the ground in Kyiv report heavy shelling currently being heard.

If you're just joining us, here are the latest developments from Ukraine as the Russian invasion enters its 17th day.

• In the US, President Joe Biden announced fresh sanctions on Russia, including a ban on imports of Russian alcohol, seafood and diamonds. He also said the US would expand the list of Russian oligarchs subject to economic sanctions.
• Biden also warned that a direct confrontation between Nato and Russia would be "World War III".
• According to the latest intelligence assessment from the UK's Ministry of Defence, Russian air missile attacks have occurred in the last 24 hours in the western cities of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk.
• A video widely shared on social media, including by the Belarusian opposition outlet, NEXTA, has been claimed to show the mayor of the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Melitopol - Ivan Federov - being dragged from a building in the city. President Zelensky called the apparent kidnapping "a crime against democracy".

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The head of Ukraine's state nuclear company, Energoatom, said Russian officials have tried to enter and take full control of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Energoatom's chief, Petro Kotin, said Russian forces had told Ukrainian staff at the plant that it now belonged to Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear company.

In a televised interview, Kotin said 10 officials from Rosatom - including two senior engineers - unsuccessfully attempted to enter the plant and take control of operations.

He added: "On the territory [of the plant] there are around 500 Russian soldiers with automatic weapons … our staff are in an extremely bad psychological state."

Kotin said on Friday that the radioactive material at the Chernobyl nuclear plant is still safely housed in storage, but warned that the plant remains disconnected from IAEA monitoring systems.

EPACopyright: EPA

The head of Instagram says that Russia's decision to block the social media platform means that tens of millions of Russians will on Monday lose access to the site and app.

"On Monday, Instagram will be blocked in Russia," tweeted Adam Mosseri.

"This decision will cut 80 million in Russia off from one another, and from the rest of the world as ~80% of people in Russia follow an Instagram account outside their country. This is wrong."

Russia made the move on Friday after Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, said that it would temporarily suspend its own rules to allow for violent threats against Russian troops.

Meta's head of global affairs said earlier today that the company's changes on speech in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine will only apply in Ukraine itself and were temporary.

Read more:

Instagram banned in Russia over 'calls to violence'

APCopyright: AP

A pregnant woman photographed escaping from the wreckage of a hospital bombed by Russia has given birth to a daughter, reports say.

The image of heavily-pregnant Mariana Vishegirskaya, her face bloodied as she descended rubble-strewn steps, was widely shared amid outrage at the attack, which killed three people.

She gave birth the following day, her niece in Turkey told local media.

Ukraine's ambassador to the UN said the baby had been named Veronika.

Mariana became the subject of a Russian disinformation campaign after the bombing.

The Russian embassy in the UK tweeted a conspiracy theory that Mariana was an actress and the aftermath of the attack had been staged.

Read more about Mariana's story here.