Russia-Ukraine war today: Russia loses 10% of combat forces as US claims Kyiv ‘able’ to retake territory

Volodymyr Zelensky said peace talks with Russia to end the war were tough and sometimes confrontational but added “step by step we are moving forward”.

In an early morning video address, the Ukrainian president also said 100,000 people were living in the besieged city of Mariupol in inhuman conditions, without food, water or medicine.

Thousands of Ukrainian children have been “kidnapped” by Vladimir Putin’s forces and taken to Russia, Kyiv has claimed (Rory Sullivan writes).

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that 2,389 children had been transported across the border from the eastern oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk.

“This is not assistance. It is kidnapping,” the US embassy in Kyiv tweeted, citing the ministry. The ministry called it a “gross violation of international law”.

Although it could not be independently verified, the kidnapping claim comes after authorities in Mariupol said several thousand of its residents had been forcibly deported to Russia.

There were also claims on Tuesday that Russia was planning to kidnap Ukrainians protesting against the invading forces and take them across the border.

A former British ambassador to Russia said he doubts the danger of Vladimir Putin using chemical weapons against Ukraine is “as high as people have said”.

Joe Biden yesterday warned there was a “clear sign” Moscow was preparing to use chemical or biological weapons as the Russian invasion struggles against Ukrainian resistance.

But Sir Tony Brenton, the UK’s top diplomat in Russia from 2004-08, said: “What I’m hearing is that it’s unlikely because if you’ve got troops on the ground, then using gas could as easily turn against your troops as for them.”

“So I doubt that the danger of him using chemical weapons is as high as people have said, including, I’m afraid, the president of the United States.

“But there is absolutely no doubt that they are very unconstrained in their use of artillery, in their use of missiles, in their use of aircraft, to flatly destroy whatever is in their way – particularly since they’ve been dramatically slowed down by the very brave Ukrainian resistance over the last four weeks.”

Russia today repeated a claim that Ukraine was prepearing to use chemical weapons – an accusation feared by some to be a means of justifying their use by Moscow.

Russian ships have been shelling Mariupol from the Sea of Azov over the last 24 hours, a senior US defence official said.

The official said that there were about seven Russian ships in that area including several warships, a minesweeper and a couple landing ships.

By contrast, the official said the US did not see indications that ships in the Black Sea were firing on Odesa, as they had done days ago.

The officials said the US assesses that the Russians have about 21 ships in the Black Sea, including about a dozen surface combatant warships and some landing ships that carry troops.

Mariupol is a crucial port for Ukraine and lies along a stretch of territory between Russia and Crimea. A weekslong siege of the city has left residents struggling to flee with no access to food, water or power.

Repeated shellings are reported to have damaged or destroyed 80 per cent of the buildings there.

Over in the US, the State Department has partnered with St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in a combined effort to support the ongoing treatment of four Ukrainian children who had their cancer treatment interrupted by the war.

“The Department supported airlift of these paediatric oncology patients and some of their immediate family members from Poland to Memphis International Airport, where they were met and transported to St Jude,” a spokesperson for the government said.

From there, the children, alongside their families, were transported to the non-profit American hospital.

The young oncology patients will now be able to resume the critical cancer therapy they need to survive, while their parents and families will be provided shelter and security, writes Johanna Chisholm.

More information has emerged on Joe Biden’s planned trip to Europe tomorrow to meet with Nato allies.

It comes after the BBC first reported that the US president was planning to announce a new sanctions package against Russia during his trip, which will see him travel to Brussels and Warsaw.

“He will have the opportunity to co-ordinate on the next phase of military assistance to Ukraine,” Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, told reporters.

Mr Biden, he added, “will join our partners in imposing further sanctions on Russia and tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement”.

Russia on Tuesday responded to accusations of its potential plans to use chemical weapons in Ukraine – by accusing the US and the UK of the same thing.

The comments were made by diplomats to reporters after Russia raised the issue of an ammonia leak in Ukraine’s besieged northeastern city of Sumy – blaming “Ukrainian radical nationalist groups” – during a closed-door UN Security Council meeting.

The accusation was rejected by Britain and the US, leaving Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Dmitry Polyansky to claim: “It is clear that the Ukrainian nationalist authorities, encouraged by the Western countries, will stop at nothing to intimidate its own people and stage false flag attacks to accuse Russia.”

It was the third time Russia raised the issue of biological or chemical weapons being built by the US and Ukraine since the conflict began last month. The West and Ukraine have rejected this as a false pretext to invade a democratic country.

“It’s hard not to conclude – given their record in the UK, in Russia against Alexei Navalny, given what we’ve seen in Syria – that this might well be a prelude to the Russians themselves creating some sort of false flag chemical weapons attack,” Britain’s UN ambassador Barbara Woodward told reporters.

Meanwhile, US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield dismissed Russia’s accusations as “ludicrous”. She said: “Our concern is that this is a precursor for Russia’s plans to use chemical weapons.”

It comes after Joe Biden said on Monday, without providing evidence, that Russia’s false accusations that Kyiv has biological and chemical weapons suggests Vladimir Putin is considering using them himself in Ukraine.

Former Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko called out Boris Johnson on Tuesday over his past comparisons between Ukraine’s fight against Russia and Brexit.

Speaking to ITV News, the former leader asked the PM to “please” avoid making such comparisons.

“How many Britons died because of Brexit?” Mr Poroshenko said, before answering his own question: “Zero.”