As Moscow’s forces continued to pound suburbs of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that his country could not fulfill “Russian ultimatums,” claiming the Kremlin was seeking to “destroy” his country.

Ukraine’s defenders have so far managed to prevent Kyiv from coming under the kind of full-scale assault that has devastated eastern cities such as Mariupol and Kharkiv ever since the war began weeks ago.

Thousands of people have been killed in the fighting and about 10 million displaced, including nearly 3.5 million refugees.

Here are the top updates of the war that was in its fourth week.

– Zelenskyy said Ukraine would never bow to ultimatums from Russia and cities such as Kyiv, Mariupol or Kharkiv would not accept Russian occupation. “We should be destroyed first,” he told local media.

Also read | Holocaust survivor killed by bombing in Kharkiv home

– Russia’s foreign ministry said it had summoned US Ambassador John Sullivan to tell him that remarks by President Joe Biden about Russian President Vladimir Putin had pushed bilateral ties to the brink of collapse. Last week, Biden said Putin was a “war criminal” for sending tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine. “Such statements from the American president, unworthy of a statesman of such high rank, put Russian-American relations on the verge of rupture,” the ministry said in a statement.

– Ukrainian prosecutors have opened an investigation into the alleged forceful seizure by Russian troops of five ships carrying Ukrainian grain in the port of Berdiansk, the general prosecutor’s office said on Monday. The criminal case is being handled by prosecutors in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, it said. Russia did not immediately comment on the statement by the general prosecutor’s office.

– Russia said a shopping mall in Kyiv, which was attacked and destroyed overnight killing at least eight people, was used to store rocket systems. Russia used “precision-guided weaponry” to destroy a store of “multiple-launch rocket systems” and ammunition in a shopping centre in Kyiv, defence ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov told media.

– The Russian military said it would continue using its state-of-the-art hypersonic missile to hit particularly important targets in Ukraine. Konashenkov said the Kinzhal hypersonic missile “has proven its efficiency in destroying heavily fortified special facilities.”

– The mayor of Kyiv said a new, longer curfew was being introduced in the Ukrainian capital because the authorities expect further shelling by Russian forces. Mayor Vitali Klitschko had earlier announced a “reinforced curfew” in the Ukrainian capital from 8pm (1800 GMT) until 7am on Wednesday. Parts of the city have come under fire repeatedly from Russian forces.

– Some of Ukraine’s most vulnerable orphans have reached relative safety at a hospital in Kyiv where doctors hope to be able to provide care and perform life-saving surgeries. More than 70 children, including infants, who have spent the past two weeks cared for in bomb shelters in the besieged city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine have been safely evacuated, local officials said over the weekend.

– Russia said it was abandoning talks with Japan aimed at signing a formal World War II peace treaty, due to Tokyo’s tough response to Moscow invasion of its east European neighbour. Russia responded after Japan acted with Group of Seven partners to pressure Moscow over its actions in Ukraine with a series of sanctions on Russian financial institutions and chip exports.

“The Russian side, in the current conditions, does not intend to continue talks with Japan on the peace treaty,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. It said this was “due to the impossibility of discussing the core document on bilateral relations with a country that has taken an openly hostile position and is striving to cause harm to the interests of our country”.

(With agency inputs)