LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he has stripped two generals of their military rank.

Zelenskyy said “something prevented them from determining where their homeland was” and they “violated their military oath of allegiance to the Ukrainian people.”

According to Zelenskyy, one of the generals had headed internal security at the SBU, the main intelligence agency.

He said the other general had been the SBU head in the Kherson region, the first major city to fall to the Russians.

Zelenskyy didn’t say anything about the fates of the two generals other than them being stripped of their rank.

The British defense ministry says that Russia is redeploying elements of its forces from Georgia in order to reinforce its attack and invasion of Ukraine. In an intelligence update Thursday, the U.K. put the number between 1,200 and 2,000.

"It is highly unlikely that Russia planned to generate reinforcements in this manner, and it is indicative of the unexpected losses it has sustained during the invasion," the British defense ministry said in the update.

Georgia, once a Soviet republic, is an independent nation but two regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, are breakaway territories that are not recognized as independent states by most of the world.

The British defense ministry did not specify a region in Georgia in its update about redeployment.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it is seeking more information about claims that Russian forces were exposed to radiation while occupying the Chernobyl nuclear site.

Ukraine's national operator of nuclear power plants said Thursday that Russian forces were withdrawing from Chernobyl and the satellite city of Slavutych, which they captured early in the invasion.

Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Russian troops who dug trenches in the forest were exposed to radiation, The Associated Press reported.

"The IAEA has not been able to confirm reports of Russian forces receiving high doses of radiation while being in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone," the international agency said. "The IAEA is seeking further information in order to provide an independent assessment of the situation."

Chernobyl, north of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and near the border with Belarus, is the site of the deadly 1986 nuclear disaster. The damaged reactor is surrounded by a large exclusion zone.

The International Committee of the Red Cross was traveling to help facilitate the evacuation of residents out of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the aid organization said Thursday.

Russia's defense ministry said Thursday that it would open a humanitarian corridor from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia for the evacuation of residents and foreigners.

The situation in Mariupol has been described as dire, with around 150,000 residents remaining in shelters from bombardment with little food or water. Russian forces have blockaded the city for weeks.

An evacuation convoy of 17 buses was able to leave Mariupol on Thursday, the City Council said. Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of shelling and attacking humanitarian corridors to Mariupol in the past.

Control of the city is contested, with Ukrainian forces fighting inside the city, a senior U.S. defense official said Thursday.

The Red Cross said it is also bringing badly needed supplies, including medicine. "It's desperately important that this operation takes place. The lives of tens of thousands of people in Mariupol depend on it," it said.

Russian forces stole 14 tons of food and medicine intended for Ukrainian civilians Thursday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

More than 1,400 missiles have been fired against Ukraine since Russia attacked last month, and the number of Russian airstrikes has increased despite talk of de-escalation, a U.S. defense official said Thursday.

"Despite the rhetoric of de-escalations, we're still observing artillery fire and airstrikes in and around Kyiv," the senior Defense Department official said at a briefing.

Some Russian forces have been seen moving from Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, but there has not been a "wholesale movement, at least not at this point," the U.S. official said. The official estimated that the number 20 percent of the Russian forces arrayed just against Kyiv.

Russia's deputy defense minister said this week that a decision was made to reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas. U.S. officials have expressed skepticism about the claim.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby has said those troops have not been sent home and that the assessment is they will be resupplied and used elsewhere in Ukraine.

Russian forces continue to stymie humanitarian efforts in Ukraine, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

In a message posted Thursday on Telegram, Vereshchuk said Russian troops took 14 tons of food and medicine intended for Ukrainian civilians. 

The Russian military also blocked 45 buses Ukrainian officials sent into Berdyansk. About 600 people must wait until Friday morning to leave for Zaporizhzhia, Vereshchuk said. More than 30 buses remain at the entrance to Berdyansk until then. 

Nearly 1,460 people were able to reach Zaporizhzhia on Thursday using three humanitarian corridors, she added. The majority are from Mariupol and cities in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Armed with a backpack and a smartphone, Ihor Solomko paced outside the San Ysidro Port of Entry at the U.S.-Mexico border Tuesday, anxiously waiting for news from his eldest daughter, whom officials stopped as she tried to cross into the U.S. that morning after having fled war-torn Ukraine.

The family has been separated since 2016, when Solomko and his wife secured green cards and moved permanently to Wisconsin with their youngest daughter. Their older daughter stayed in Ukraine with her husband and hadn’t seen her parents in two years.

“I’m so stressed. I can’t think straight,” Solomko said. “I just want to hug my daughter.”

Solomko is one of hundreds of Ukrainians living in the U.S. who rushed to pick up loved ones at the U.S.-Mexico border, which became a flashpoint in recent weeks for Eastern Europeans expecting to be immediately welcomed into the U.S. 

But confusion and frustration are overshadowing humanitarian efforts as conflicting information from the Biden administration leaves thousands of people stuck in legal limbo, without a direct way to seek asylum and making it difficult for loved ones in the U.S. to contact relatives who are being detained or processed by immigration officials.

Read the full story here.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday the country is gradually being freed from Russian “occupiers.”

Zelenskyy said on his official Telegram account that Russian forces, who he said never expected to be fighting after more than a month, are weakening. 

“We endured tenfold what the enemy thought we would. They said — three or five days. They thought that this would be enough for them to capture our whole country. And it is already 36 days. And we are standing. And we will continue to fight,” he said.

“Our Armed Forces, the National Guard, the National Police, intelligence community, they are doing a great job. Absolute gratitude towards them. North of Kyiv, in Chernihiv direction, in Sumy oblast, the expulsion of the occupiers is continuing. They realize it themselves that they are not able to cope with the intensity of the combat operations that they were able to secure in the first half of March. … They are leaving those directions where we are defeating them, so they could focus on other ones.”

While most of Zelenskyy’s tone was optimistic, he said Russia is wreaking havoc in southern Ukraine and the Donbas, where the situation remained “very difficult.”

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon says an initial half-dozen shipments of weapons and other security assistance have reached Ukraine as part of the $800 million package of aid that President Joe Biden approved on March 16.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Thursday that the shipments included Javelin anti-tank weapons, Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems, body armor, medical supplies and other material. He said the 100 Switchblade armed drones that Biden approved as part of the package have not yet been delivered.

Kirby said the $800 million in assistance is likely to be fully delivered within about two weeks. It also includes Mi-17 helicopters, small arms, ammunition, vehicles, secure communications systems, and satellite imagery and analysis capability.

Separately, Kirby said U.S. troops are not training Ukrainian troops in Poland but are acting as liaisons with Ukrainian personnel who cross the border into Poland to take possession of U.S. security assistance. He noted that the standard U.S. military training mission that had existed in Ukraine for years was suspended shortly before Russia invaded.

LVIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s ombudsperson says that at least one person has been killed and four others have been wounded in the Russian shelling of a humanitarian convoy.

Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Lyudmyla Denisova said those who came under the shelling on Thursday were volunteers accompanying a convoy of buses sent to the northern city of Chernihiv to evacuate residents.

She said that the Russian forces besieging Chernihiv have made it impossible to evacuate civilians from the city that has been cut from food, water and other supplies.

The Russian shelling continued two days after Moscow announced it would scale back military operations around Kyiv and Chernihiv.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday it would open a humanitarian corridor from the besieged city of Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia on Friday, news agency Tass reported.

It quoted Col.-Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, the director of the Russian National Center for Defense Management, as saying Moscow was acting on a request that French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had made to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan renewed his offer to host a meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders in a telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

A statement from Erdoğan’s office said he also told Zelenskyy on Thursday that a meeting between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators who met in Istanbul this week had given “a meaningful impetus” to efforts to end the fighting.

Ukraine’s delegation laid out a framework this week under which the country would declare itself neutral and its security would be guaranteed by an array of nations, including Turkey.

Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said at a joint news conference with a top Turkish Cypriot official that Erdoğan also is expected to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Biden told reporters Thursday there is "no clear evidence" that Putin is pulling back all of his forces.

Of the idea that Putin is pulling all of the troops out from around Kyiv and moving south, "there's no evidence he's done that," Biden said. 

However, he said there is evidence Putin is "beefing up" his troops in the Donbas region. 

"Depending on your view of Putin, I'm a little skeptical," Biden said. "It's an open question whether he's actually pulling back. 

"But I'm a skeptic. I don't have proof," he continued. 

President Joe Biden said Thursday he plans to release about 1 million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for about six months to drive down record oil prices.

The move could free up as much as 180 million barrels of oil, the largest release of U.S. reserves in history, with the first barrels coming on the market in May. The U.S. consumes more than 7 billion barrels of oil a year. "This is a wartime bridge to increase oil supply until production ramps up later this year," Biden said. 

U.S. consumers have been hit with record gas prices as a result of disruptions to the oil market caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the U.S. ban on Russian oil imports following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The surge in prices has helped push inflation to its highest point in decades, with oil prices affecting the cost of a wide variety of goods, from plastics to food.

The U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine says the United Nations and its partners have delivered supplies for thousands of people in the country's northeast but have been unable to reach some encircled cities in the south.

Osnat Lubrani said Thursday that food rations from the humanitarian organization People in Need and the U.N. World Food Program will benefit nearly 6,000 people in Sumy and areas including Trostianets and Okhtyrka.

In addition, she said, basic household items including blankets and kettles from the U.N. refugee agency will support 1,500 people and sanitation kits will help 6,000 people with hygiene and drinking water.

Lubrani said medical supplies and trauma kits from the U.N. World Health Organization will treat 150 patients needing intensive care for serious injuries while other medical supplies will support 10,000 people for three months.

Shei said the U.N.-facilitated humanitarian notification system with Ukraine and Russia enabled safe passage for the convoy to Sumy on Thursday “but this is clearly not enough.” Efforts over the past month to reach Mauripol, Kherson and other encircled cities in the south have been unsuccessful because of safety concerns.

Britain and its allies have agreed to send more lethal weapons to Ukraine to help defend it against Russia's invasion, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace said Thursday.

"There'll be more lethal aid going into Ukraine as a result of today. A number of countries have come forward either with new ideas or indeed more pledges of money," Wallace told reporters after he hosted over 30 international partners at a conference.

He said the lethal aid included longer-range artillery, ammunition and more anti-aircraft weapons.

Russian forces are withdrawing from Chernobyl and the satellite city of Slavutych, according to Energoatom, the national operator of Ukraine's nuclear power plants.

Russia captured Chernobyl, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, over a month ago. Since then, a limited number of Ukrainian personnel have remained at the plant to ensure it continues to function. 

Energoatom said Thursday that the Russian decision to reallocate forces was influenced in part by soldiers' contact with radiation from the site and the resulting symptoms, which sparked concerns. The organization said soldiers from both the plant and the city are headed toward Ukraine's shared border with Belarus. 

The Ukrainian military is reporting a partial withdrawal of Russians from Kyiv, with almost 700 units of equipment having been seen leaving overnight, according to the Ukraine Media Center.

"During the night, almost 700 units of equipment were counted, which moved towards Ivankiv, towards the Belarusian border," said Oleksander Gruzevich, the deputy chief of staff of Land Forces Command. 

The armed forces believe either the troops are regrouping and redeploying or the battalion tactical groups will appear in the Donbas, which is in southeastern Ukraine, Gruzevich said.

"Measures are currently underway to liberate and clean up the occupiers of settlements in the Kyiv region," he said. 

He added the forces that remain around Kyiv are still quite large. "There is nothing to be afraid of, but they can cause harm," Gruzevich said.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a news conference Thursday that NATO intelligence shows Russia is not withdrawing from Ukraine but rather that its troops are repositioning. "Russia is trying to regroup, resupply and reinforce its offensive in the Donbas region," he said. 

ROME — A Kremlin decree says “unfriendly countries” can continue to pay for natural gas in foreign currency through a Russian bank that will convert the money into rubles.

The decree published Thursday by state media came a day after the leaders of Italy and Germany said they received assurances from President Vladimir Putin.

Putin talked tougher, saying Russia will start accepting ruble payments starting Friday for Western countries that imposed sanctions over its conflict with Ukraine. He said contracts will be stopped if buyers don’t sign up to the new conditions, including opening ruble accounts in Russian banks.

European leaders had rejected paying for deliveries in rubles, saying it would undermine sanctions imposed because of the war in Ukraine.

The decree Putin signed and published by state news agency RIA Novosti says a designated bank will open two accounts for each buyer, one in foreign currency and one in rubles. The buyers will pay in foreign currency and authorize the bank to sell that currency for rubles, which are placed in the second account, where the gas is formally purchased.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that NATO intelligence shows Russia is not withdrawing from Ukraine but rather repositioning its troops.

"Russia has repeatedly lied about its intentions. So we can only judge Russia on his actions, not on its words. According to our intelligence, Russian units are not withdrawing but repositioning," he said at a news conference. "Russia is trying to regroup, resupply and reinforce its offensive in the Donbas region." Donbas is in southeastern Ukraine.

Russia is also maintaining "pressure" on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, Stoltenberg said. "So we can expect additional offensive actions bringing even more suffering."

"Russia must end this senseless war, withdraw all its troops and engage in talks in good faith," he added. 

Thousands of residents have died in the besieged port city of Mariupol since Russia invaded Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.

Addressing Belgium's Parliament by videoconference Thursday, Zelenskyy said “thousands of peaceful residents of Mariupol” have died.

"People are being buried in the courtyards in residential areas, or rather in the courtyards of what is now left of these residential areas," he said. 

An evacuation convoy of 17 buses was able to leave Mariupol on Thursday morning, according to its City Council. Many have yet to be evacuated out of the city, where the humanitarian situation has become increasingly dire.

President Joe Biden is weighing the release of about 1 million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for about six months, a source familiar with the matter said.

The president could announce the plan, which could free up as much as 180 million barrels of oil, when he delivers remarks from the White House at 1:30 p.m. Thursday. Biden plans to outline his administration's actions to lessen the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on domestic energy and gas prices.

The news comes several weeks after he announced the U.S. was banning the import of Russian energy products, including oil, liquified natural gas and coal, as part of an effort to increase pressure on Russia's economy through a range of sanctions. The president and other administration officials made clear that they anticipated the move would lead to a rise in already-high gas prices.

Read the full story here. 

Anna Chernikova, 26, is spending every day helping refugees get situated in Vinnytsia, a city of approximately 400,000 in west-central Ukraine. 

Just a few years ago, she was a refugee herself. She left the Donbas region back in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. Her father moved her, her mother and two brothers to Vinnytsia.

“I waved my grandma goodbye and told her I would see her in two weeks. It was the last time I would see her,” she said, standing in a storefront that has been transformed into a humanitarian hub for Ukrainian refugees at a high-end mall.

Chernikova stood in the empty storefront full of boxes with clothing donations from all over the world, including the United States. A steady stream of refugees walked past her as they looked for clothes that would fit them.

TALLINN, Estonia — Each new bomb and missile that strikes Ukraine casts a long shadow across this country and the other Baltic states that share a border with Russia.

Unlike Ukraine, however, these states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — are members of NATO and are close allies of the United States. For years, they have raised the alarm that Russia is their most existential threat. Yet, they feel they received little response prior to the invasion of Ukraine. 

Now, unless they get further support from their allies, they fear they could be the next target of the Kremlin and the very bombs and missiles that it has used to level Ukrainian cities.

Read the full article here. 

The Ukrainian economy is expected to shrink by one-fifth this year, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said Thursday. 

The bank said it expected Ukraine’s gross domestic product to fall by 20 percent this year and Russia’s by 10 percent, in its biannual Regional Economic Update published Thursday.

The bank said the war was taking place in territories that produce about 60 percent of Ukraine's GDP. It said that the National Bank of Ukraine estimates that 30 percent of businesses have stopped production, while electricity consumption was estimated at about 60 percent of the prewar level. 

"Projections are subject to an exceptionally high degree of uncertainty, including major downside risks should hostilities escalate or should exports of gas or other commodities from Russia become restricted," it noted.

Still, the bank further said that the war would have a "severe effect" on economies beyond the immediate area of the conflict.

"The war on Ukraine has been having a profound impact on the economies in the EBRD regions, as well as globally," Beata Javorcik, chief economist of the bank, said. "Inflationary pressures were already exceptionally high and it seems certain they will now be worse, which will have a disproportionate affect on many of the lower income countries where we work.”

Russian forces are not withdrawing and instead have repositioned after vows of scaling down military operations near Ukraine's capital and Chernihiv, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at a news conference Thursday.

“Russia is trying to regroup, resupply and reinforce its offensive in the Donbas region. At the same time, Russia maintains pressure on Kyiv and other cities. So, we can expect additional offensive actions bringing even more suffering,” he said.

He also reiterated warnings that any use of chemical weapons will be “absolutely unacceptable."

Stoltenberg welcomed additional defense spending by Eastern European nations, calling for a more “360 degree approach."

The Kremlin rejected U.S. claims that Vladimir Putin is being misled by his advisers about Russia's failures on the battlefield.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during a daily news briefing Thursday that "neither the State Department nor the Pentagon have real information about what is happening in the Kremlin." 

"They just don’t understand what’s going on in the Kremlin, they don’t understand President Putin, they don’t understand the decision-making mechanisms, and they don’t understand the way of our work," he said. He added that "such a complete misunderstanding leads to erroneous and rash decisions that cause very bad consequences."

It comes after declassified U.S. intelligence claimed that Putin's senior advisers have been "too afraid to tell him the truth" about the situation on the ground in Ukraine. 

“We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth," a U.S. official told NBC News.

The head of the British intelligence agency GCHQ has further said it appears Putin "has massively misjudged the situation" in Ukraine, warning that the Russian leader's backup plan will be to launch more attacks on civilian areas.

Ukrainian police and emergency officers escorted an evacuation convoy of 17 buses out of Mariupol on Thursday morning, according to its city council.

The convoy will join a column of 45 other evacuation buses carrying civilians out of the blockaded city to Berdyansk to the southwest.

"Every day is a struggle for the people of Mariupol who still remain in the besieged city. We call for the full evacuation of Mariupol. I appeal to all international partners to help and save every Mariupol resident by joint actions," Mayor Vadym Boychenko said in a statement.

More than 80,000 residents have been safely evacuated from Mariupol to the city of Zaporizhzhia, around 141 miles west of the city, since the efforts began, according to the city council. 

Elsewhere, more than 380 people were evacuated from the Luhansk region, while over 200 were evacuated from the city of Severodonetsk, according to the head of its regional administration. 

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba was received by the Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw on Thursday as part of an "active dialogue" between the two governments. 

"We highly value Poland’s strong support for Ukraine and hospitality towards Ukrainians," Kuleba tweeted. "Free and strong Ukraine means free and strong Poland and Europe." 

More than 4 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in February, according to the United Nations refugee agency. More than 2.3 million have fled to neighboring Poland. 

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Ukraine is ready to bring aid and evacuate civilians out of Mariupol on Friday, it has said.

"Our team in Ukraine is on the road right now to be ready to ... facilitate the safe passage of civilians out Mariupol tomorrow," it said in a tweet Thursday.

"This operation is critical. Tens of thousands of lives depend on it," it said, adding that "all parties must agree to the exact terms" to allow the effort to move forward.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said in a tweet he was working on returning home Ukrainians which were “abducted or forcibly relocated” to Russia.

Earlier on Wednesday, ICRC said it had also delivered urgently needed medicines and supplies to the Kharkiv regional hospital.

At least 148 children have been killed since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February, according to the office of Ukraine's Prosecutor General. 

As of Thursday, at least 232 children were reported to have been injured, without taking into account numbers from areas affected by active hostilities, according to the office. 

Iryna Venediktova, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine shared the data on Twitter, adding that at least “797 educational institutions were damaged, 76 completely destroyed.” NBC News was not able to independently verify those numbers. 

Soldiers from The Royal Anglian Regiment sort and pack some of the 84,000 ballistic helmets being shipped to soldiers and emergency service workers in Ukraine on Thursday in Donnington, England. 

The British government has made 14 additions to its list of sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with senior figures from media organizations among those targeted.

The government announced the additions on Thursday, as the West continues to issue penalties to pressure Russia to end the war by crippling the country's economy. 

Among those sanctioned are senior figures from media outlets including RT's managing director Alexey Nikolov, Sputnik's editor-in-chief Anton Anisimov and Sergey Brilev, a news anchor at state-owned Rossiya Television and Radio network. 

"The government is also directly sanctioning state media organizations, targeting the Kremlin funded TV-Novosti who own RT, formerly Russia Today, and Rossiya Segodnya who control news agency Sputnik," the government said. 

Russia's Chief of the National Defence Command and Control Centre Mikhail Mizinitsev was also named on the list, with the U.K. saying he was "responsible for planning and executing the siege and bombardment of Mariupol." 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked the European Union for more weapons in a video conference address to the Dutch parliament, warning that war could spread across Europe if Russian forces were not stopped. 

"Ukraine is just the beginning. If you don't, if we don't stop Russia, and if we don't stop it urgently," he said as the conflict dragged into its 36th day. 

Zelenskyy thanked the Netherlands for its support during the conflict but stressed his country needed more. "We need stingers. Air defense weapons, they will allow us to stand strong. We also need weapons which can secure our skies or unblock our cities where Russia has created artificial famine. We need weapons that will allow us to drive the occupiers out of our land," he said. 

The president also appealed for stronger sanctions against Russia. 

"Together with other countries in the EU you must do everything so that Russia will have no resources to continue this war," he urged the parliamentarians. 

Rescuers evacuate an elderly man as Russia's attack on Ukraine continued in the town of Irpin, outside Kyiv on Wednesday.  

Russia is not allowing for humanitarian corridors in Kharkiv, regional governor Oleh Synegubov said on Thursday. 

"We are working every day to open green corridors. But so far Russia is not giving us such an opportunity," Synegubov said in a statement on the administration's official Telegram channel. 

"As we can see, the actions of the Russian occupiers are difficult to predict, they are completely chaotic," he continued, saying the Ukrainian armed forces were holding their positions to fend off Russian forces.

Russia and Ukraine earlier this month had agreed on the opening of humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to escape the worst of the fighting.

The city suffered dozens of artillery, mortar and tank attacks on Wednesday evening, Synegubov said, as well as missile strikes. A gas pipeline was also damaged, causing a strong fire. 

The Australian government is imposing an additional 35% increase in imports from Russia and Belarus, its foreign and trade ministry announced Thursday.

Foreign Affairs minister Marise Payne said in a statement that the government will draft a “formal notification withdrawing entitlement to the Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) tariff treatment” to apply the additional fee on imports from Russia and Belarus.

Payne said this move attempts to further condemn Russia’s actions and is aligned “with other like-minded members of the World Trade Organization.”

The ministry’s statement came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a virtual address to the Australian parliament Thursday.

Russian shelling over the past two days set fire to a school, an oil depot, and dozens of houses in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region, the regional state administration has said. The shelling killed at least two people and injured two children, it said.

NBC News was not able to verify the death toll. 

"Several injured and dead residents could not be taken from the streets for hours," Serhiy Haidai, governor of Luhansk region, said in a statement shared on the administration's Telegram page. "The final number of victims is still being determined."

The regional state administration said the Ukrainian army had rebuffed several Russian attacks in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions on Wednesday.

Russia has agreed to open a humanitarian corridor for evacuation from the besieged cities Mariupol and Melitopol to Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk has said, citing confirmation from the Red Cross.

Vereshchuk said officials had "received a message from the International Committee of the Red Cross about Russia's confirmation of its readiness to open a humanitarian corridor from Mariupol with transit through Berdyansk" in a televised statement. NBC News was not able to independently confirm the agreement. 

Along with the planned evacuation routes, humanitarian aid will also be delivered to those in Melitopol, Vereshchuk said.

Corridors have further been approved for evacuees fleeing the city of Enerhodar, home to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe that caught fire earlier in March, Vereshchuk added.

At least 45 buses have already been sent for the planned evacuation from Mariupol, while the approved link from Enerhodar to Zaporizhzhia will have to be undertaken by one’s own transportation, the deputy prime minister said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed Australia's parliament via video link Thursday, warning that global security could be at risk if Russia does not end its invasion of Ukraine. 

He specifically warned about the threat of the use of nuclear weapons and the risk of radioactive contamination of nuclear weapons are used. 

Despite a vow to reduce military activity around Ukraine's capital and Chernihiv, Russia has continued significant shelling and missile strikes around the latter northern city, Britain's defense ministry has said.

Meanwhile, Russian forces continue to hold positions around Kyiv, it said in its latest intelligence update Thursday.

“Russian forces continue to hold positions to the east and west of Kyiv despite the withdrawal of a limited number of units,” it said.

Meanwhile, heavy fighting continued in the besieged city of Mariupol with Ukrainian forces controlling the city’s center, it said.