RUSSIA-UKRAINE LIVE: Tank convoy near Kyiv sparks fears of imminent attack

A 40-mile convoy of tanks and other vehicles threatened Ukraine’s capital Kyiv today on the sixth day of the conflict as its president accused Russia of war crimes.

Vladimir Putin’s forces launched what Ukraine’s ambassador to the US has said were vacuum bomb attacks as Russia intensified shelling of the city of Kharkiv.

Mr Putin had launched an indiscriminate bombing campaign on Kharkiv just 24 hours after local resistance had sent his troops packing from its streets.

The bombs, shells and rockets which began falling yesterday left at least 11 dead, including three children, with homes and even a school reduced to rubble. 

Russian artillery also hit a military base in the city of Okhtyrka and more than 70 Ukrainian soldiers were killed, regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyy said. 

After a first, five-hour session of ‘peace talks’ between Ukraine and Russia yielded no stop in the fighting, both sides agreed to another meeting in coming days.

But Ukraine’s embattled president Volodymyr Zelensky said he believed the stepped-up shelling was designed to force him into concessions.

And the Kremlin has found itself increasingly isolated by economic sanctions that have sent its currency plummeting and seen it kicked out of the World Cup. 

Meanwhile Britain’s UN Ambassador warned at an emergency meeting of the Security Council that Ukraine is on the brink of a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’.

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