The United States, together with the Group of Seven nations and the European Union, are moving to revoke Russia's "most favoured nation" status over its invasion of Ukraine, multiple people familiar with the situation have told Reuters.
Cars and buildings shelled by Russian troops in the city of Kharkiv. Photo: AFP
Stripping Russia of its favoured nation status paves the way for the United States and its allies to impose tariffs on a wide range of Russian goods, which would ratchet up pressure on an economy already heading into a recession.
Washington's moves to tighten the screws on Moscow come as US and European officials accuse Russia of war crimes over its bombardment of civilians in Ukrainian cities, amid repeated violations of ceasefires in which each side blames on the other.
Three air strikes early on Friday in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro killed at least one person, state emergency services said, adding that the strikes were close to a kindergarten and an apartment building.
Satellite images showed a Russian military column threatening Kyiv from the north had dispersed to new positions, private US company Maxar Technologies said, possibly in preparation for an assault on the capital.
Removing Russia's status of "Permanent Normal Trade Relations" with the United States would significantly escalate pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the largest conflict in Europe since World War II.
The US Senate voted on Thursday to approve legislation providing $US13.6 billion to help Ukraine finance ammunition and other military supplies, as well as humanitarian support.
"We're keeping our promises to support Ukraine as they fight for their lives against the evil Vladimir Putin," Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" to disarm Ukraine and unseat leaders it calls neo-Nazis. Ukraine and Western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war of choice that has raised fears of wider conflict in Europe.
A Ukrainian tank on the move to defend a part of the country in the face of Russian aggression. Photo: AFP
Russian column redeploys
Images provided by Maxar showed armoured units manoeuvring in and through towns close to Antonov airport northwest of Kyiv, while other elements further north had repositioned near Lubyanka with towed artillery howitzers in firing positions.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the images but the Ukrainian armed forces' general staff said late on Thursday Russian forces had regrouped after heavy losses, without specifying which elements they were referring to.
After three weeks of war, Russia has failed to reach its stated objectives of disarming the Ukrainian military and ousting the democratically elected government, but it has caused thousands of deaths and forced more than 2 million people to flee the country, where several cities are under siege.
Putin on Thursday acknowledged there had been "problems and difficulties" in Ukraine but said Russia would emerge stronger from the war.
Vladimir Putin has agreed there have been some "problems" during the invasion of his neighbour. Photo: AFP
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the operation was going to plan, after holding talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, in Turkey on Thursday, the highest-level meeting since Putin ordered the invasion on 24 February.
Media in Russia are barred from reporting anything other than the Kremlin's line on events in Ukraine, including allegations this week that the United States is secretly developing biological weapons there.
The United Nations Security Council will convene on Friday at Russia's request, diplomats said, to discuss Moscow's allegations, which Washington has described as disinformation.
The World Health Organisation advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens housed in the country's public health laboratories to prevent "any potential spills" that would spread disease among the population, the agency told Reuters on Thursday.
The information war picked up on social media as well, with Russia demanding that Washington stop the "extremist activities" of Facebook owner Meta Platforms, which temporarily lifted a ban on calls for violence against the Russian military and leadership.
The social media company will temporarily allow some posts that call for the death of Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland, according to internal e-mails to its content moderators.
Civilians trapped
Hundreds of thousands of civilians remained trapped in Ukrainian cities, sheltering from Russian air raids and shelling despite repeated Russian promises to provide humanitarian corridors for evacuations.
Russia's defence ministry said it would declare a ceasefire on Friday and open humanitarian corridors from Mariupol as well as Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Chernihiv, although previous ceasefires have failed.
A mother and her child at the train station in Lviv - among the more than 2 million refugees who have so far fled the war. Photo: AFP
Officials in the besieged port of Mariupol said Russian warplanes again bombed the city on Thursday, a day after a maternity hospital was pulverised in an attack the United States said was evidence of a war crime.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said Washington was "working with others in the international community to document the crimes that Russia is committing against the Ukrainian people".
"They constitute war crimes; there are attacks on civilians that cannot be justified in any way whatsoever," she said in an interview with the BBC.
Lavrov said the hospital struck on Wednesday had stopped treating patients and had been occupied by Ukrainian "radicals". Russia's Defence Ministry later denied having bombed the hospital at all, accusing Ukraine of a "staged provocation".
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday that Ukrainian authorities had managed to evacuate almost 40,000 people from the cities of Sumy, Trostyanets, Krasnopillya, Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel and Izyum.
-Reuters