Russian troops edged closer to Kyiv on Friday, as officials said the Ukrainian capital was being transformed into a “fortress” and President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of again targeting humanitarian corridors.

Civilian targets came under Russian shelling in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro Friday, killing one, emergency services said, in what appeared to be the first direct attack on the city. Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed in Russian strikes on the Lutsk military airport in northwest Ukraine. Earlier, Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konachenkov announced that “Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk military airfields had been put out of action”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he wanted to allow volunteers to fight against Ukrainian forces and approved handing over captured Western missile systems to Russian-backed rebel fighters. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu proposed handing over American made anti-tank systems such as Javelin and Stinger to fighters from the rebel regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

No chemical weapon or any other weapons of mass destruction were developed in Ukraine, the country’s President said today, warning Russia that the use of biological weapons against his country will invite the “most severe sanctions”. This came after Russia on Thursday accused the United States of funding research into the development of biological weapons in Ukraine.

Two and a half million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24, the United Nations said Friday. 

The US Congress passed a huge omnibus 2022 spending bill Thursday including almost $14 billion in humanitarian and military aid to war-torn Ukraine, as its invasion by Russia entered its third week.

Japan said it will freeze the assets of three Belarusian banks, days after EU countries agreed to toughen sanctions on Minsk over its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The United States and its European allies could impose additional penalties on Moscow because “the atrocities that they’re committing against civilians seem to be intensifying”, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

Talks between Ukraine and Russia’s foreign ministers on Thursday failed to bring any respite in the two-week-old conflict as hundreds of thousands of civilians remained trapped in Ukrainian cities sheltering from Russian air raids and shelling. It was their first face-to-face meeting since Moscow launched its invasion.

At least 71 children have been killed and more than 100 wounded in Ukraine since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a war on February 24, a Ukrainian parliament official said.