Fighting rages near Kyiv as Russia keeps up siege of other cities

Fighting raged northwest of Kyiv on Saturday, with the bulk of Russian ground forces 25 kilometres from the centre of the Ukrainian capital, while several other cities were encircled and under heavy shelling, the U.K. Defence Ministry said.

Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said she hoped that several humanitarian corridors would open on Saturday for thousands of residents in the bombarded cities, including from the besieged port city of Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia.

"I hope that the day will go well, all the planned routes will be open and Russia will fulfil its obligations to guarantee the ceasefire regime," Vereshchuk said in a video address after repeated evacuation efforts this week failed.

At least 1,582 civilians in the southeastern city of Mariupol have been killed as a result of Russian shelling and a 12-day blockade, the city council said in an online statement on Friday. It was not possible to verify casualty figures.

Air raid sirens blared across most Ukrainian cities on Saturday morning urging people to seek shelters, local media reported, after President Volodymyr Zelensky said the war had reached a "strategic turning point."

Russian forces appeared to be regrouping, possibly for a fresh offensive which could target the capital Kyiv in a few days, Britain's defence ministry said on Friday. In a Saturday update, it said fighting northwest of the capital continued and the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remained encircled under heavy Russian shelling.

Efforts to isolate Russia economically have stepped up, with the United States imposing new sanctions on senior Kremlin officials and Russian oligarchs and the European Union set to strip Russia of its privileged trade status on Saturday.

With the Russian assault in its third week, Zelensky, who has rallied his people with a series of addresses from the capital Kyiv, said Ukraine had "already reached a strategic turning point."

"It is impossible to say how many days we still have [ahead of us] to free Ukrainian land. But we can say we will do it," he said. "We are already moving towards our goal, our victory."

The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, three family members of President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson and lawmakers in the latest punishment for Russia's Feb. 24 invasion.

"Treasury continues to hold Russian officials to account for enabling Putin's unjustified and unprovoked war," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

Russian forces kept up their bombardment of cities across the country on Friday in the biggest assault on a European country since the Second World War. Satellite images showed them firing artillery as they advanced on Kyiv.

The fighting has created more than two million refugees, and thousands of Ukrainians are trapped in besieged cities.

As hundreds sheltered in Kharkiv metro stations, Nastya, a young girl lying on a makeshift bed on the floor of a train carriage, said she had been there for over a week, unable to move around much and ill with a virus.