Ukrainian officials negotiating with their Russian counterparts are to ensure direct talks between the countries' leaders that could lead to bringing peace, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Sunday.

Saudi Arabia said Saturday it had executed a record 81 people in one day for terrorism-related offences, exceeding the total number killed last year and sparking criticism from rights activists.

Iran claimed responsibility for a missile strike yesterday on the northern Iraqi city of Arbil, saying it targeted an Israeli “strategic centre”.

Russia has said it will treat arms shipments to Ukraine from Nato countries as “legitimate targets” for military action in a dangerous new escalation of tensions as the United States stepped up arms supply to Ukraine.

Russian air strikes hit a large Ukrainian base near the border with Nato member Poland yesterday, killing 35 people and wounding 134 a local official said, in an escalation of the war to the west of the country as intense fighting was reported elsewhere.

An Argentine family is about to finish the trip of a lifetime: they have covered five continents in a 1928 jalopy on an adventure that began in 2000, while bringing into the world and raising four kids who are now adolescents.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis held talks in Istanbul yesterday, seeking a rapprochement between the neighbouring Nato members to the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Egypt's Ali Farag, the world's number one squash player, used his victory speech at the Optasia Championship yesterday to express his dissatisfaction with Western media coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine last month, reports Indian news portal NDTV.

Waves of Russian missiles pounded a military training base near Ukraine’s western border with NATO member Poland, killing 35 people, Ukrainian authorities said Sunday. The strike followed Russian threats to target foreign weapon shipments that are helping Ukrainian fighters defend their country against Russia’s grinding assault.

A US journalist was shot dead and another wounded on Sunday in Irpin, a frontline northwest suburb of Kyiv, medics and witnesses told AFP.

India today announced its decision to temporarily relocate its embassy in Ukraine to Poland as the war between Russia and Ukraine intensified.

Russian Ambassador to Bangladesh Alexander V Mantytskiy has slammed a section of Bangladeshi media for what he called “biased approach” in their coverage of the situation in Ukraine and Russia’s actions there.

Australia has welcomed Ukrainians fleeing the war with bipartisan support as its government has promised to expedite student, skilled worker, and tourist visas for them, according to MSN News.

The body of Hadisur Rahman, third engineer of the Bangladeshi ship “Banglar Samriddhi”, who was killed in a rocket attack at a Ukraine port on March 3, is now in Turkey’s Istanbul and is set to reach Dhaka tomorrow afternoon (March 14).

Saudi Arabia's announcement that it executed a record 81 prisoners in a single day has reignited the debate over the ongoing use of capital punishment in around 50 countries worldwide.

The United Nations will have multiple meetings this week about Russia's war in Ukraine, though it is unclear if these will lead to the adoption of an official text, diplomats said.

Around 13,000 people were evacuated from a number of Ukrainian cities on Saturday, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, almost twice the number who managed to get out the previous day.

Russian forces pounded the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on Saturday, shelling its downtown as residents hid in its iconic mosque and elsewhere to avoid the explosions. Fighting also raged in the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv, as Russia kept up its bombardment of several resisting cities.

Ukraine accused Russian forces on Saturday of killing seven civilians in an attack on women and children trying to flee fighting near Kyiv, and France said Russian President Vladimir Putin had shown he was not ready to make peace.

US President Joe Biden has vowed that Russia would pay a “severe price” if it used chemical weapons in Ukraine, while also pledging to avoid provoking Moscow into “World War III.”