* European buyers of Russian gas faced a deadline to start paying in roubles on Friday, while negotiations aimed at ending the five-week war were set to resume even as Ukraine braced for further attacks in the south and east.
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* Ukrainian forces were preparing for new Russian attacks on the Donbas region in the southeast after they repelled Russia's assault on the capital Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
* He said the situation in the south and the Donbas remained extremely difficult and Russia was building up forces near the besieged southern port of Mariupol.
* Nearly 5000 people have been killed in Mariupol, the mayor's office estimates, and about 170,000 people remained trapped amid ruins without food, heat, power or running water.
* Russian forces killed 148 children during shelling and air strikes, fired 1370 missiles and destroyed 15 Ukrainian airports since the start of the invasion, Ukraine's defence ministry said.
* The Ukrainian state nuclear company said all of the Russian forces occupying the Chernobyl nuclear power station had withdrawn from the territory of the defunct plant.
* European governments rejected President Vladimir Putin's energy ultimatum, with the continent's biggest recipient of Russian gas, Germany, calling it "blackmail".
* US President Joe Biden announced the largest release from the US emergency oil reserve to bring down petrol prices that have soared during the war.
* The war also threatens to disrupt global food supplies, with a US government official sharing images of what they said was damage to grain storage facilities in Ukraine, the world's fourth-largest gain exporter in the 2020-21 season.
* Russia and Ukraine would resume peace talks online on April 1, a senior Ukrainian official said.
* The Russian defence ministry said it would open a humanitarian corridor from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia on Friday, Tass news agency reported.
QUOTE
"We spent 30 days in the basement, with small children. The children are shaking, even still. They ask: 'When will we go to kindergarten? When will we go to school?' They don't understand what has happened," said a woman named Larisa in Trostyanets, a town in the country's east recaptured by Ukrainian forces.
Australian Associated Press