• Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer will travel to Russia to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, an Austrian government spokesperson said. The planned meeting with the Russian leader follows a trip by Nehammer to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Saturday.

•  The United States is committed to providing Ukraine with “the weapons it needs” to defend itself against Russia, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday as Ukraine seeks more military aid from the West.

•  Sullivan also said he expects Russia's newly appointed general overseeing Ukraine, Alexander Dvornikov, to orchestrate crimes and brutality against Ukrainian civilians, although he offered no evidence for saying that.

• A grave containing dozens of civilians' bodies has been found in Buzova village near Kyiv, a Ukrainian official told Reuters. 

• Two people were killed and several injured on Sunday in the Ukrainian town of Derhachy in the northeastern Kharkiv Oblast, regional governor Oleh Synyehubov said in a Facebook post. Russian forces had carried out 66 artillery attacks across several regions, the governor said.

• Russian forces fired shells into Ukraine's Luhansk and Dnipro regions hitting several buildings, wounding one person and causing a fire. 

• British military intelligence said Russia was seeking to strengthen troop numbers with personnel discharged from military service since 2012, as losses mount from the military operation.

• Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova confirmed on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine carried out a prisoner exchange on Saturday. Moskalkova said that among those exchanged to Russia were four employees of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom and soldiers. "Early this morning they landed on the Russian soil," she wrote. 

• Residents of the besieged region of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine will have nine trains to use on Sunday for evacuation, Luhansk regional Governor Serhiy Gaidai wrote on Telegram.

• Ukraine has banned all imports from Russia, one of its key trading partners before the conflict, with annual imports valued at about $6 billion, and called on other countries to follow and impose harsher economic sanctions.

• Slovakia could sell Ukraine some of its Zuzana self-propelled howitzers, Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad said on Sunday. "I can confirm that we are in talks," he said.

• President Zelenskyy has again called on the European Union to increase its sanctions on Russia - but said he had not lost hope for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. 

• Pope Francis called for an Easter truce in Ukraine and condemned the "folly of war" as he led Palm Sunday services in the Vatican's St. Peter's Square before an audience of tens of thousands of people.

• Around 600 pro-Russian protesters demonstrated in a motorcade in Hanover in the north of Germany on Sunday, but were outnumbered by around 700 people supporting Ukraine in the city centre, local police said.

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Bucha killings: The evidence

'What we saw was catastrophic'

Satellite images taken on April 8 showed a long military column moving through the Ukrainian town of Velykyi Burluk near Kharkiv, heading south towards Donetsk. 

The private U.S. company Maxar Technologies said the images showed a 12.8 kilometer column made of armored vehicles, trucks towing artillery and support equipment.

It's believed that Russia is gathering its forces in the east for a major assault.

The UK's Defence Ministry said Russia was seeking to establish a land corridor from Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and the eastern Donbas region, which is partly held by Moscow-backed separatists.

Cover photo: Austria's chancellor Karl Nehammer at a press conference with Ukraine's President in Kyiv, on Saturday. Ronaldo Schmeidt / AFP