Boris Johnson is considering a lightning trip to Kyiv to show support for Ukraine’s battle against Vladimir Putin.
The Prime Minister has asked officials to examine the practicality and value of the trip to the Ukrainian capital for talks with president Volodymyr Zelensky.
Security officials are said to be ‘having kittens’ at the prospect of the PM travelling to a war zone; from which ten million have fled, UN High Commissioner Filippo Grandi said on Sunday.
But a Whitehall source said Mr Johnson ‘wants to go’ if it can be made to work.
The source added: ‘If you set aside the security concerns, which are considerable, the question is whether there is anything additional you could achieve by visiting in person, or whether it would just be a show of solidarity, and whether that is a sufficient goal in itself.’
But the situation last night in Kyiv showed how difficult it would be to ensure the Prime Minister’s safety if he does visit.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko shared pictures of what appeared to be an explosion in the distance in the city’s Podil district.
In a tweet he reported claims of several explosions, ‘in particular, according to information at the moment, some houses and in one of the shopping centres’.
Klitschko added that ‘rescuers, medics and police are already in place’ and reported ‘at this time – one victim’. It is unclear if he referred to a fatality or injury.
Another post from the mayor said: ‘Rescuers are extinguishing a large fire in one of the shopping centres in the Podolsk district of the capital. All services – rescue, medics, police – work on site. The information is being clarified.’
More devastating scenes continue to emerge from near the city, as seventeen-year-old Bogdan was pictured heavily injured following Friday’s fighting in Brovary, east of the capital Kyiv.
The teenager, with his arms in a splint and his face bloodied and bruised, was photographed having a cigarette after he and his family were saved by Ukrainian forces.
He told The Times: ‘For two days, I was freezing, and in so much pain.’
His mother and stepfather also suffered burns from missiles which wrecked the house as the family for two days waited for help.
The prime ministers of Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic made a trip to Kyiv last week.
‘I have a very, very strong desire to support him [Zelensky] in any way I can. Whether that would be a useful way of showing my support I don’t know but it is of huge strategic, political, economic, moral importance for Putin to fail and Zelensky to succeed,’ Mr Johnson told The Sunday Times.
It came as Chancellor Rishi Sunak yesterday moved to defuse a row caused by a Tory spring conference speech at the weekend, in which the PM appeared to link Ukraine’s battle for freedom against Putin with Britain’s vote to leave the EU.
He said: ‘The instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time… When the British people voted for Brexit, in such large, large numbers, I don’t believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners.
‘It’s because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself.’
But Mr Sunak said: ‘He was talking about freedom in general. Those two situations are not directly comparable and no one thinks that they are.’
Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves urged the PM to apologise for the ‘crass remarks’.
The last EU diplomat to evacuate the besieged Ukrainian port said: ‘What I saw, I hope no one will ever see.’
Greece’s consul general in Mariupol, Manolis Androulakis, left the city on Tuesday.
After a four-day trip through Ukraine he crossed to Romania through Moldavia, along with 10 other Greek nationals.
As he arrived in Athens on Sunday, Mr Androulakis said: ‘Mariupol will become part of a list of cities that were completely destroyed by war; I don’t need to name them- they are Guernica, Coventry, Aleppo, Grozny, Leningrad.’
According to the Greek Foreign Ministry, Androulakis was the last EU diplomat to leave Mariupol.
Pro-Russian separatists gave directions to civilians trying to escape the heavily bombarded city of Mariupol

Groups of Ukrainians fleeing the war left the city in the southeast of the country, where there has been intense fighting

Previous humanitarian corridors in the war-torn country had failed after Russia allegedly bombed civilians who were trying to leave
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said that the West needs to have a ‘degree of scepticism’ about the prospect of a peace deal between Russia and Ukrainevas Kyiv looked to stand firm against giving up territory in a settlement.
Speaking today, the Chancellor said it is ‘encouraging’ that discussions are under way but the West has to be on its guard.
Mr Sunak told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme: ‘You have to have some degree of scepticism about it given the track record of these things.
‘I think the most important thing is that any talk of a settlement must be on Ukraine’s terms.
‘And the best thing we can do is just maintain the significant pressure that we are bringing to bear on Putin, but also providing support to the Ukrainians in the meantime – that’s the best we can do and the Ukrainians will take the lead.’
An official in Mr Zelensky’s office told the Associated Press that the main subject discussed between the two sides last week was whether Russian troops would remain in separatist regions in eastern Ukraine after the war and where the borders would lie.
But a Ukraine politician said while her country is open to further meetings with Russia, it is not prepared to give up land to the aggressor.
Olha Stefanishyna, deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, told Sky News that re-drawing Ukraine’s borders is ‘absolutely not’ being considered.
‘Ukrainian territory is a territory which has been fixed (since) 1991,’ she said.
‘That is not an option for discussion.’
According to reports, Kyiv has insisted on the inclusion of one or more Western nuclear powers in the negotiations with the Kremlin and on legally binding security guarantees for Ukraine.
Asked whether the UK would act as a security guarantor to the Ukrainians as part of any peace deal, Mr Sunak – who confirmed his family will not be taking in a Ukrainian refugee – said it is ‘probably a bit too early to get into the details’ of what an agreement might look like.
Elsewhere, Boris Johnson has urged China to get off the fence and join in global condemnation of Russia’s invasion.
The Prime Minister, in comments made to the Sunday Times, said he believes some in Xi Jinping’s administration are having ‘second thoughts’ about the neutral stance adopted by Beijing following Russia’s actions against its neighbour.
But today China’s ambassador to the US defended his country’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking with CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ Qin Gang said condemnation ‘doesn’t solve the problem’.
He said: ‘I would be surprised if Russia will back down by condemnation.’
Mr Gang added: ‘(China) will continue to promote peace talks and urge immediate fire.
‘And, you know, condemnation, you know, only, doesn’t help. We need wisdom. We need courage and we need good diplomacy.’
Zelensky also said peace talks with Russia were needed although they were ‘not easy and pleasant’. He said he discussed the course of the talks with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday.
‘Ukraine has always sought a peaceful solution. Moreover, we are interested in peace now,’ he said.
Vladimir Putin has reportedly ‘finally agreed’ to meet in person with Zelensky for peace talks.
So far the negotiations have been between middle men on neutral ground but the war has continued into its fourth week.
The Russian tyrant will allegedly meet President Zelensky ‘at some point’, the Express reported.
The two leaders have let their diplomatic teams conduct peace talks on the neutral ground since shortly after the start of the conflict on February 24, but a BBC correspondent has confirmed the two will meet in person.
Putin has come to terms with fact he will have to lead the negotiations at some time in the future, the BBC’s Lysa Doucet said.
She said: ‘The diplomats are talking, the negotiators are talking. We understand President Putin has finally agreed that he will meet, at some point, President Zelensky who has been asking for a meeting since January.
‘He hasn’t said it in public, he says quite the opposite in public.’
She added: ‘The Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is very busy, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is very busy.

Footage filmed in Mariupol showed a Ukrainian regiment firing a BTR-4 30mm cannon on a Russian BTR-82A and a T-72B3 tank

The Ukrainian cannon seemed to aim at the Russian tank’s tracks in a bid to put the vehicles out of order

It seemed to shoot around a metre above the heads of soldiers on the ground, who had their rifles aimed at the tanks

The tanks had been painted with a white ‘Z’, which has quickly become a symbol for Russia in its war with Ukraine
‘They’ve said privately their understanding is that President Putin will meet President Zelensky when the time is right. But the time is not right now.’
Meanwhile, Russia’s military isn’t even recovering the bodies of its soldiers in some places, Zelensky said.
‘In places where there were especially fierce battles, the bodies of Russian soldiers simply pile up along our line of defence. And no one is collecting these bodies,’ he said.
He described a battle near Chornobayivka in the south, where Ukrainian forces held their positions and six times beat back the Russians, who just kept ‘sending their people to slaughter’.
Russian news agencies, citing the country’s defence ministry, have said buses carrying several hundred people – which Moscow calls refugees – have been arriving in Russia from Mariupol in recent days.

An evacuation of civilians from secure corridors pictured in Mariupol, Ukraine on March 18

Service members of pro-Russian troops drive an armoured vehicle in Mariupol, Ukraine on March 19

A discarded pram pictured as an evacuation of civilians from secure corridors took place in Mariupol, Ukraine on March 18

Earlier on Sunday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia’s siege of the port city of Mariupol was ‘a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come’

Service members of pro-Russian troops in uniforms without insignia drive an armoured vehicle during Russia’s invasion of Mariupol.
The Russian TASS news agency reported on Saturday that 13 busses were moving to Russia, carrying more than 350 people, about 50 of whom were to be sent by rail to the Yaroslavl region and the rest to temporary transition centres in Taganrog, a port city in Russia’s Rostov region.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said this month that Russia had prepared 200 busses to ‘evacuate’ citizens of Mariupol.
RIA Novosti agency, citing emergency services, reported last week that nearly 300,000 people, including some 60,000 children, have arrived in Russia from the Luhansk and Donbas regions, including from Mariupol, in recent weeks.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said this month that more than 2.6 million people in Ukraine have asked to be evacuated.
The city council in the Azov Sea port city said Sunday that 39,426 residents, almost ten per cent of the 430,000 who live there, have safely evacuated from Mariupol in their own vehicles. It said the evacuees used more than 8,000 vehicles to leave via a humanitarian corridor via Berdyansk to Zaporizhzhia.
Air raid sirens sounded across major Ukrainian cities early on Sunday but there were no immediate reports of fresh attacks.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been trapped in Mariupol for more than two weeks, sheltering from heavy bombardment that has severed central supplies of electricity, heating, food and water supplies, and killed at least 2,300 people, some of whom had to be buried in mass graves, according to local authorities.

Ukrainian firefighters and security teams at the scene of a building hit by Russian missiles in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 20

Although the fires were put out, cars were left burnt out, with a residential blocks of flats damaged by the air strike

A woman holding a pug walks away from the the scene of a building hit by Russian missiles in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 20
The governor of the northeastern Sumy region, Dmytro Zhyvytskyy, said Sunday that 71 infants have been safely evacuated via a humanitarian corridor.
Zhyvytskyy said on Facebook that the orphans will be taken to an unspecified foreign country. He said most of them require constant medical attention. Like many other Ukrainian cities, Sumy has been besieged by Russian troops and faced repeated shelling.
Meanwhile, the Russian military says it has carried out a new series of strikes on Ukrainian military facilities with long-range hypersonic and cruise missiles.

A man helps Ukrainian soldiers searching for bodies in the debris at a military school hit by Russian rockets, in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine

Saved: A Ukrainian recruit was rescued after 30 hours from debris of the military school hit by Russian rockets, in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, on March 19
A Russian attack on a barracks for young Ukrainian recruits in the middle of the night that killed at least 50 young Ukrainian recruits was branded as ‘cowardly’.
Russian rockets struck the military school in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, on Friday, killing dozens of young Ukrainian ensigns at their brigade headquarters.
Ukrainian soldier Maxim, 22, who was at the barracks, said ‘no fewer than 200 soldiers were sleeping in the barracks’ at the time of the strike.
‘At least 50 bodies have been recovered, but we do not know how many others are in the rubble,’ he said.
Vitaly Kim, the governor of Mykolaiv, said Russia ‘hit our sleeping soldiers with a rocket in a cowardly manner.’
Meanwhile Olga Malarchuk, a military official, said: ‘We aren’t allowed to say anything because the rescue operation isn’t over and the families haven’t all been informed.
‘We are not yet able to announce a toll and I cannot tell you how many soldiers were present’.
Russia also said it had fired a second ‘unstoppable’ hypersonic Kinzhal missile at a fuel depot in Kostyantynivka, in the southern region of Mykolaiv.
A MiG-31K jet fired the aeroballistic missile at the warehouse as it was flying over Crimea.
Major General Igor Konashenkov, from the Russian Defence Ministry, said the target was the main supply of fuel for Ukrainian armoured cars in the south of the country.
He claimed the missile had destroyed the depot. It is the second time Russia says it has used the missile in Ukraine, after a weapons storage site was destroyed in Deliatyn, in the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine, on Friday.
NATO deem the weapon so powerful it has been nicknamed The Sizzler.

At least 200 soldiers were sleeping at the time of the attack, which was branded ‘cowardly’ by the governor of Mykolaiv

Russian forces carried out a large-scale air strike on Mykolaiv, killing at least 50 Ukrainian soldiers at their brigade headquarters

Ukrainian soldiers search for bodies in the debris at the military school hit by Russian rockets the day before, in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, on March 19
Russia has never before admitted using the high-precision weapon in combat.
Moscow claims the ‘Kinzhal’- or Dagger – is ‘unstoppable’ by current Western weapons. The missile, which has a range of 2,000 kilometer (1,250 miles), is nuclear capable.
However, both hypersonic strikes so far have not been nuclear.
‘The Kinzhal aviation missile system with hypersonic aeroballistic missiles destroyed a large underground warehouse containing missiles and aviation ammunition in the village of Deliatyn in the Ivano-Frankivsk region’, the Russian defence ministry said Saturday.
Russian Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov also said that the Russian forces used the anti-ship missile system Bastion to strike Ukrainian military facilities near the Black Sea port of Odessa.
Aerial footage released by the Russian military claimed to show the missile strike. Large, long buildings are shown in the footage in a snowy region, before one is obliterated by a huge explosion – sending flames, earth and debris high into the air. People can be seen on the ground fleeing as smoke pours from the site.
Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuri Ignat confirmed that a storage site had been targeted, but added that Kyiv had no information regarding the type of missile that was used.