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We need closed skies - Lviv mayor
The mayor of the city of Lviv in the west of the country - a hub for people fleeing the conflict - has been speaking to the BBC.
“Lviv today is a huge centre of war refugees, more than 200,000 people come to Lviv... and
my responsibility, my duty is to give them the maximum. It’s my job," Andriy Sadovyi said.“This morning's attack is [a] shock.
“I had a meeting with Polish politicians and Polish mayors. I sent a very strong message, 20km (12.5 miles) from the European Union’s borders. We need military equipment, we need bullet-proof vests, we need [helmets]… We need together support and help, help [for] refugees, and help [for] Ukrainian troops.”
Asked if Lviv, as a city close a Nato country, is a target, he says Lviv is in a similar situation to other cities in Ukraine, in that it is difficult to predict what the next target will be.
In a final message to the countries of Nato now that the war has come that much closer to the border with them, he says:
“We need closed sky, we need military equipment… We need [a] decision today. We need bullet-proof vests today, not tomorrow. Tomorrow, Russian missile finish in the European Union.”
A US journalist, Brent Renaud, has been shot dead in the town of Irpin outside Kyiv, police say.
Kyiv's police chief Andriy Nebytov said he had been targeted by Russian soldiers. Two other journalists were injured and taken to hospital.
It is the first reported death of a foreign journalist covering the war in Ukraine.
Photographs are circulating showing a press ID for Renaud that was issued by the New York Times.
In a statement, the newspaper said it was saddened to hear of Renaud's death but that he had not been working for the newspaper in Ukraine.
He last worked for the newspaper in 2015, the NYT said, and the press ID he was wearing in Ukraine had been issued years ago. It was not immediately clear who Renaud was working for in Ukraine.
The former mayor of Polish capital Warsaw has given one of his homes over to refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sophie Raworth, Marcin Swiecicki said he currently has 13 people staying at the house, though at one point had 17.
“We [had previously planned] to rent it out for some extra money,” he said. “But we have the resources to live on, so of course [we made it available].”
“This was the decision of all the family.”
Over two million people have now left Ukraine, with around 250,000 of them currently in Warsaw.
Also speaking to the BBC, Irish Taoiseach Michael Martin said he believed all countries in the EU should do what Ireland has done and allow refugees to come from Ukraine without the need for visas or other checks.
“It will logistically be very, very challenging,” he said. “But we believe we need to do it, because we believe this is a battle between democracy and authoritarianism, fundamentally.”
The anger in the mayor’s voice was palpable. “We will send the Russians home in their coffins or they will be buried in the ground here,” he said. Volodmyr Maceluh was standing outside the municipal office in Novojavorivsk, about five kilometres from where emergency workers were still recovering the dead and injured from the rubble of the military base attacked by Russia in the early hours of the morning.
The mayor’s anger is widely felt here. But this escalation is not unexpected. In recent days Russia has warned that it would hit targets in the west of the country to try to stop the shipment of EU and Nato weapons to Ukraine. Much of this materiel is thought to arrive into Ukraine via Poland.
Until the past few days western Ukraine has been relatively secure – for refugees but also for Ukraine’s military. It seemed only a matter of time before Russia turned its attention to military facilities and airports. There were strikes on airports near the cities of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk the night before last.
The missiles arriving across the Polish border have helped Ukraine to mount a stiff resistance and counter – at least partially – Russia’s significant advantages in armoured forces. However, interdicting weapons supplies is notoriously difficult, as the experiences of wars in the Middle East, Vietnam and Afghanistan have shown.
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