· The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting at the request of Russia to discuss military biological research that Russia claims was conducted by the U.S. in Ukraine. Russia's envoy told the meeting there is a network of biological laboratories on Ukrainian territory and accused the Zelenskyy government of destroying evidence of biological weapons research.

· YouTube is immediately blocking access around the world to channels associated with Russian state-funded media, citing a policy barring content that denies or trivializes well-documented violent events.

· The number of Ukrainians to flee the country since the conflict began has reached 2.5 million, according to United Nations (U.N.) aid agencies, with predictions that this number could double in the coming weeks. The U.N. human rights office (OHCHR) confirmed the deaths of 564 civilians in Ukraine since the conflict began, including 41 children.

· Ukraine's emergency services say there were no casualties on a reported strike on a psychiatric hospital in the east of the country because residents were sheltering in the building's basement.

· Russian President Vladimir Putin said there had been some progress in Moscow's talks with Ukraine, but provided no details. "There are certain positive shifts, negotiators on our side tell me," Putin said in a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, adding that talks continued "practically on a daily basis."

· Russian territorial advances in Ukraine have stalled and the Russian armed forces have made no progress in the last 24 hours, according to Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych.

· Ukraine's ambassador has urged Israel to step up its support for Ukraine by sanctioning Moscow, accepting more Ukrainian refugees and sending defence equipment. Despite condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Israel has maintained contacts with Moscow, with which it coordinates strikes in Syria..

· Russia has agreed for up to 16,000 volunteers from the Middle East to be deployed alongside Russian-backed rebels to fight in Ukraine.

· The invasion by Russian forces has caused $119 billion in damages to Ukraine's economy, deputy economy minister Denys Kudin revealed. Kudin said 75 percent of enterprises in war-hit areas had stopped operating and most metallurgical enterprises in eastern Ukraine were not working.

· Almost one million Ukrainians are without electricity, the state-owned nuclear energy provider Energoatom revealed. "Nearly 228,000 consumers have been left without gas," the company said in a statement.

· Russian forces have shelled residential areas of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv 89 times in one day but there is no danger to civilians after an institute containing a nuclear laboratory was hit, according to the local governor.

· Russia has opened a criminal case against Facebook's parent Meta Platforms FB.O and moved to designate it as an "extremist organisation" after the social network changed its hate speech rules to allow users to call for violence against Russians in the context of the war with Ukraine.

· The first delivery of aid from China including blankets, moisture-proof mats, towels, tableware, buckets, flashlights and other daily necessities has arrived in Ukraine on the way to the city of Chernivtsi.

MORE DETAIL

The homeless nation

More than 2.5 million people have fled Ukraine, U.N. agencies revealed, with a further 2 million driven from their homes within the country since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24.

The U.N. has been planning its humanitarian needs on the assumption that some 4 million Ukrainian refugees would seek safety abroad.

However, with around 200,000 people having fled to neighboring countries in 24 hours, a U.N. refugee official said they may have to revise that figure.

"It is quite possible that planning figure of 4 million will be revised up. That wouldn't be a surprise," Matthew Saltmarsh, a spokesperson with the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) near the border in Poland told journalists via videolink.

Humanitarian agencies are scrambling to provide heating facilities for thousands of refugees waiting in freezing temperatures at border crossings, he said.

Meanwhile, trucks are taking thousands of thermal blankets and mattresses in the other direction.

Hundreds of thousands of people are trapped under heavy bombardment of cities and towns in Ukraine and are running out of supplies, with both sides blaming the other for failing to observe ceasefires. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that some progress had been made in Moscow's talks with Ukraine.

At a Kremlin meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin said Western sanctions will not hinder Russian development and that Russia would end up stronger. He said Ukrainian negotiations are taking place practically every day.

"There are certain positive shifts, negotiators on our side tell me," Putin said. "I will talk about all of this later."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ukraine's Dmytro Kuleba met in Turkey on Thursday in the highest-level talks since the conflict began. No breakthrough was made.

Meanwhile the Kremlin said the conflict would only end when the West took action over Russia's repeatedly raised concerns about the killing of civilians in eastern Ukraine and NATO enlargement eastwards.