Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

(Reuters) – Russian President Putin threatened to halt contracts supplying Europe with a third of its gas unless they are paid in Russian currency.

FIGHTING

* Ukrainian forces are preparing for new Russian attacks on the Donbas region in the southeast after they repelled Russia’s assault on the capital Kyiv, President Zelenskiy said.

* He said the situation in the south and the Donbas remained extremely difficult and Russia was building up forces near the besieged southern port of Mariupol.

* Nearly 5,000 people have been killed in Mariupol, the mayor’s office estimates, and about 170,000 people remain trapped amid ruins without food, heat, power or running water. Reuters has been unable to verify the figures.

* Russian forces have killed 148 children during shelling and air strikes, fired 1,370 missiles and destroyed 15 Ukrainian airports since the start of the invasion, Ukraine’s defence ministry said. Reuters could not independently verify the information.

* The Ukrainian state nuclear company said all of the Russian forces occupying the Chernobyl nuclear power station had withdrawn from the territory of the defunct plant.

ECONOMY

* U.S. President Biden announced the largest release from the U.S. emergency oil reserve and challenged oil companies to drill more in an attempt to bring down gasoline prices that have soared during the war.

* One of Russia’s flagship airliner projects, the Irkut MS-21, will use domestic engines because sanctions mean U.S. models are no longer available, the RIA news agency said.

DIPLOMACY

* Russia and Ukraine are to resume peace talks online on April 1, said a senior Ukrainian official.

HUMANITARIAN CONCERNS

* A convoy of Ukrainian buses set out for Mariupol to try to deliver humanitarian supplies and bring out trapped civilians, the deputy prime minister said.

* The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it would evacuate people from Mariupol from Friday if the warring parties allowed safe passage.

* The Russian defence ministry said it would open a humanitarian corridor from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia on Friday, Tass news agency reported.

QUOTES

* “We spent 30 days in the basement, with small children. The children are shaking, even still. They ask: ‘When will we go to kindergarten? When will we go to school?’ They don’t understand what has happened,” said a woman named Larisa in Trostyanets, a town in the country’s east recaptured by Ukrainian forces.

(Compiled by Frank Jack Daniel and Alexandra Hudson; editing by Grant McCool)