TOP HEADLINES

• Russian forces were continuing to attack the vast Azovstal steel plant in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian presidential aide Oleksiy Arestovych said on Monday.

• Russia's first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations said Moscow sees no point in a ceasefire in Ukraine at this stage as Kyiv might use it to stage "provocations".

• Five railway stations came under fire in western and central Ukraine in the space of an hour, causing an unspecified number of casualties, state-run Ukrainian Railways said. Ukraine's military command said Russia was trying to bomb its rail infrastructure in order to disrupt arms supplies from foreign countries.

• One person was killed and seven wounded in missile strikes on the Kremenchuk oil refinery and power plant in the Poltava region southeast of Kyiv, regional governor Dmytro Lunin said. Russia said it had destroyed facilities there.

• Ukrainian human rights ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said the Russian military had destroyed 347 health facilities including all of those in the Luhansk part of the Donbas, threatening thousands of lives. All of the Luhansk province was without electricity on Monday after Russian attacks, the governor said.

• Britain said Russia had made minor advances since shifting its forces to fully occupying the eastern Donbas region but had tied up many units with its focus on Mariupol's Azovstal steel plant.

• The Russian ruble strengthened on Monday, firming past 77 against the euro to a near two-year high, helped by tax payments that companies are due to make this week.

• President Vladimir Putin said that Russia's economy was stabilizing after being hit by unprecedented sanctions over the military campaign in Ukraine. 

• Norwegian police said they had arrested 20 Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion campaigners who on Monday blocked a tanker from delivering Russian oil to an Exxon Mobil terminal.

• Putin accused the West of trying to destroy Russia, demanding prosecutors take a tough line with what he cast as plots hatched by foreign spies to divide the country and discredit its armed forces.

• Putin accused the West of trying to murder Russian journalists and said the Federal Security Service (FSB) had thwarted one such attempt on a television reporter.

• U.S. President Joe Biden named veteran diplomat Bridget Brink as the new U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, the White House said on Monday, moving to fill a crucial position that was vacant for nearly three years.

• More than 5.2 million Ukrainians have fled the country since the start of the conflict, with over 45,000 having left in the past 24 hours, the UN says.

• The U.S. State Department said it supported the approval of a possible sale of $165 million worth of ammunition to Ukraine to help the country defend itself against Russia's ongoing campaign.

• Ukrainian footballer Alan Aussi will play for Borussia Dortmund in Tuesday's benefit game against his parent club Dynamo Kyiv, but admits his thoughts are often with friends affected by the war with Russia.

• Germany reacted with defiance to Russia's announcement that it would expel 40 German diplomats in response to a similar move by Berlin over the conflict in Ukraine. "We expected today's step, but it is in no way justified," Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in a statement. 

• The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor will join an EU investigations team to probe possible international crimes committed in Ukraine, the EU's judicial cooperation agency said Monday.

• Russia's flagship carrier Aeroflot reported a 20 percent fall in passenger traffic in March year-on-year following tough western sanctions over Moscow's military operation in Ukraine.

• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin pledged more than $700 million in additional direct and indirect military aid for Ukraine, including $300 million to allow the country to purchase necessary weapons, during the first high-level U.S. visit to Ukraine since the start of the conflict.

• Russia has warned the U.S. against sending more arms to Ukraine, Moscow's ambassador to Washington told Russian state television.

• Ukraine's general staff said Russia was shelling its second biggest city, Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine and towns and villages to the south but that Ukrainian forces had staved off assaults on three settlements. In the southern Mykolaiv region, governor Vitaliy Kim said the Ukrainian military had destroyed 13 Russian units.

• Russian forces shot down two Ukrainian drones overnight in the Rylsky district on the border with Ukraine, Kursk region governor Roman Starovoyt said on Telegram.

• A large fire broke out early on Monday at an oil storage facility in the Russian city of Bryansk, the emergencies ministry said, adding that no one was injured. There was no immediate indication that the fire was related to the military action in Ukraine.

• Finland and Sweden will together express their wish to join NATO in May, according to local media reports citing sources close to the matter.

IN DETAIL

Russia: 'We don't think a ceasefire is a good option now'

A senior Russian diplomat said on Monday that there was no point in having a ceasefire in Ukraine at this stage because Kyiv was likely to use it as an opportunity to try to discredit Russia, after Kyiv denied reaching an agreement with Moscow over a humanitarian corridor.

"Ukraine is undermining our efforts to open humanitarian corridors so we don't think a ceasefire is a good option now," RIA quoted Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia's first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, as saying.

Ukraine earlier denied reaching a deal with Russia on evacuating civilians from a steel plant in the southern city of Mariupol, and said the United Nations should be the "initiator and guarantor" of any such deal.

Polyanskiy said a ceasefire would only "be an opportunity for Ukrainian forces to regroup and stage more provocations."

He said Russia had not struck any residential areas in Ukraine's Black Sea port city of Odesa. Ukraine's southern air command said on Saturday that two missiles struck a military facility and two residential buildings in Odesa. 

Polyanskiy did not immediately respond to a Reuters news agency request for comment.

Russia had said earlier on Monday that it would open a humanitarian corridor for civilians to leave Mariupol's huge Azovstal steel plant, where they are holed up with Ukrainian fighters and are under Russian fire. 

"Today, the Russian side once again announced the existence of a corridor for civilians to leave Azovstal. This could be believed if the Russians had not destroyed humanitarian corridors many times before," Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

"It is important to understand that a humanitarian corridor opens by the agreement of both sides. A corridor announced unilaterally does not provide security, and therefore is not a humanitarian corridor."

Shortly after she made her comments, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces were attacking the steel plant from the air and with artillery and tanks.

Russia was "trying to advance with assault groups," political advisor Oleksiy Arestovych said in a video address, despite President Putin saying last week it was unnecessary to storm the plant.

Vereshchuk said the United Nations should oversee any safe corridor arrangements.

Ukraine has "appealed to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to be the initiator and guarantor of the humanitarian corridor from Azovstal for civilians," she said.

The impact of the conflict on multiple sclerosis drug trial

Swiss multinational healthcare company Roche has warned that Russia's military campaign in Ukraine is disrupting the development of a new generation of multiple sclerosis (MS) drugs as the industry has come to disproportionately rely on Eastern Europe for clinical trials.

The pharmaceutical industry has been scrambling to find ways to keep patients in Ukraine enrolled in various clinical trials as millions have fled the conflict and sought shelter in neighboring countries. 

"Both Ukraine and Russia historically have been very important contributors to clinical trials for patients with neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis," the head of Roche's pharmaceutical division, Bill Anderson, told reporters on a call after the release of first-quarter sales.

About 20 to 30 percent of patients in the global MS trial program for the drug fenebrutinib, have been from Ukraine and Russia, far above the countries' revenue potential, the Swiss company said.

It said it was opening sites in additional countries, "recruiting for additional sites in countries where we do have clinical trials and recruiting patients into existing sites faster."

While trials in Ukraine have been massively disrupted by the conflict, no more new trial participants will be recruited in Russia as part of Roche's response to Moscow's offensive, which was similar to that of other drugmakers. 

Eastern Europe is an attractive trial location because investigators running medical centers are well trained and patients have a strong incentive to volunteer as participants because they often stand to receive better care than what the health system offers.

Ukraine 'can win if they have the right equipment, the right support'

The U.S. wants Russia "weakened" so it cannot invade again and Ukraine can win the war if it has the right equipment, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said on Monday on returning from a trip to Kyiv.

"The first step in winning is believing that you can win. And so they believe that we can win," Austin told a group of journalists after the visit with the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The two, who met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were the first high-profile U.S. officials to visit Ukraine since the Russian offensive began on February 24.

"We believe that we can win, they can win if they have the right equipment, the right support," Austin said.

Austin and Blinken said U.S. diplomats will begin a gradual return to Ukraine this week and announced $700 million in additional military aid.

"We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine," Austin said.

Russia "has already lost a lot of military capability. And a lot of its troops quite frankly, and we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability," he added.

The U.S. has been a leading donor of finance and weaponry to Ukraine and a key sponsor of sanctions targeting Russia, but had not yet sent any top officials to Kyiv, while several European leaders had traveled there to underscore their support.