• Sweden and Finland's leaders discussed their expected bids to join NATO with U.S. President Joe Biden for just over half an hour, according to the White House. Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said on Twitter that his country "deeply appreciates all the necessary support from the U.S.".

• The non-aligned countries' applications face potential opposition from NATO member Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he does not have a "positive opinion" of them joining the alliance, adding that it was not possible for Turkey to support enlarging the alliance because Finland and Sweden were "home to many terrorist organisations".

• However, Ankara has not completely shut the door to the Nordic nations, but wants to negotiate and see a clampdown on what it deems "terrorist activities" related to Kurdish political organizations, especially in Stockholm.

• The foreign ministers of Finland and Turkey will meet in Berlin on Saturday to try and solve disagreements over Finland and Sweden's plan to join NATO, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavesto said. "I am sure we will find a solution," he added.

• The Finnish president has also spoken to Russia's Vladimir Putin about his country's NATO bid. Putin told his counterpart that ditching neutrality and joining NATO would be a mistake that could damage their relations, the Kremlin said.

• Russia's foreign ministry said Moscow had no hostile intentions towards the two Nordic countries but that it would take "adequate precautionary measures" if NATO deployed nuclear forces and infrastructure closer to Russia's border.

• Russia on Saturday suspended electricity supply to Finland, according to Finland's energy operator. RAO Nordic, a subsidiary of Russian state energy holding Inter RAO, said it was forced to suspend electricity imports. However, Finland's electricity network operator says it would be able to continue without Russian electricity.

• Ukraine's president said difficult talks are underway on evacuating "a large number" of wounded soldiers from a besieged steelworks in Mariupol in return for the release of Russian prisoners of war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said talks with Russia on getting the fighters out of the Azovstal plant were "very complex", adding that Kyiv was using influential intermediaries.

• Turkey has proposed a sea evacuation of wounded fighters holed up in the Azovstal steel works, Erdogan's spokesman said.

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said Moscow is the target of "total hybrid war" by the West but will hold out against sanctions by forging closer relations with China, India and others. "It is hard to predict how long all this will last but it is clear the consequences will be felt by everyone, without exception," he said.

• Ukraine's military said Russian forces fired on a border settlement in the Chernihiv region from Russia's own territory and eight explosions were recorded on the outskirts of Bleshnya village. There were casualties, they said.

• Kyiv's military has also beaten back Russian soldiers from Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv, near the Russian border. However, Moscow continues to fire on nearby villages, including Dergachi, some 10 kilometers north of the major city, according to local reports.

• U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu have had their first conversation since before the conflict began. "Secretary Austin urged an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication," the Pentagon said in a statement.

• Group of Seven foreign ministers have vowed to reinforce Russia's economic and political isolation, continue supplying weapons to Ukraine and tackle what Germany's foreign minister described as a "wheat war" being waged by Moscow.

• France said the world's wealthiest nations were "strongly united" in backing Ukraine until its "victory" against Russia, while Britain urged more weapons to be sent to Kyiv. "It is very important at this time that we keep up the pressure on Vladimir Putin by supplying more weapons to Ukraine," British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on the second day of G7 talks in Germany.

• Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has called on the major industrialized nations to seize Russian assets and give them to Kyiv to help rebuild his conflict-stricken country ahead of his meeting with the G7 counterparts. He added that if a Russian oil embargo wasn't in the EU's next sanctions package, due to opposition from Hungary, it would mean the end of the bloc's unity, calling it a "critical moment".

• A Russian soldier accused of killing a civilian has appeared in a Kyiv court in what will be the first war crimes trial since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February. Vadim Shishimarin, 21, allegedly shot an unarmed 62-year-old civilian who had witnessed Russian troops trying to steal a car while fleeing. He faces possible life imprisonment on charges of war crimes and premeditated murder.

READ MORE: Russian soldier first to go on trial for alleged war crime in Ukraine

• The Ukraine conflict could reach a "breaking point" by August and end in defeat for Russia before the end of the year, according to the head of Ukraine's military intelligence. Major General Kyrylo Budanov, 36, told the UK's Sky News, "Most of the active combat actions will have finished by the end of this year. As a result, we will renew Ukrainian power in all our territories that we have lost including Donbas and the Crimea."

• The UK has sanctioned 12 members of Putin's "inner circle", accusing them of hiding tens of billions of dollars for him. The list includes Putin's ex-wife Lyudmila Ocheretnaya and Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast, as well as Kabaeva's grandmother Anna Zatseplina.

IN DETAIL 

Mariupol steelworks PoW swap

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said very difficult talks were underway on evacuating a large number of injured soldiers from the besieged Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol in return for the release of Russian prisoners of war.

After several months of a Russian siege, the strategic port city is now under its control but hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers, many from the far-right Azov battalion, are still trapped in the steel factory after weeks of heavy Russian bombardment.

"At the moment very complex negotiations are under way on the next phase of the evacuation mission – the removal of the badly wounded, medics," Zelenskyy said in a late night address.

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He added that "influential" international intermediaries were involved in the talks. Moscow had initially insisted the fighters holding on in the sprawling Soviet-era bunkers beneath the steelworks give themselves up, but has said little publicly about the negotiations.

Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Saturday that efforts were now focused on evacuating about 60 people, including the most seriously wounded and medical personnel.

Many of those still in the plant are members of the Azov Regiment, an ultra-nationalist volunteer battalion with links to neo-Nazi ideology which was then integrated into the Ukrainian army. Deputy commander Sviatoslav Palamar on Friday said his forces would continue to resist as long as they could.

"Our enemy, supported by planes and artillery, continues to attack. They continue their assault on our positions but we continue to repel them," he told an online forum streamed on YouTube.

Russia makes gains in Ukraine's southeast

Despite Ukrainian resistance, Russian forces have made steady gains in Ukraine's southeast.

"We are entering a new, long phase of the war," Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in a Facebook post, predicting extremely tough weeks when Ukraine would largely be alone against an "enraged aggressor".

In its latest bulletin, Russia's defense ministry said it had hit Ukrainian command posts, ammunition depots and other military equipment in several regions, including the Donbas, killing at least 100 Ukrainian "nationalists".

Moscow has also imposed a military-civilian administration in Ukraine's southern Kherson region and will hold a referendum there on whether it wants to join the Russian Federation, mirroring similar votes held in Crimea in 2014 and in two Donbas regions.

Anna Kuznetsova, deputy head of Russia's Duma or lower house of parliament, visited Kherson, offering assistance to residents of the small southern city seized in the first week of the attack.

Ukrainian forces have beaten back Russian soldiers from the second largest city, Kharkiv, near the Russian border, but Moscow was still firing on nearby villages, including Dergachi, some 10 kilometers north of Kharkiv.