Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said situation in Donbas region remained extremely difficult reiterating that Russia was building up forces near the besieged city of Mariupol.
"There will be battles ahead. We still need to go down a very difficult path to get everything we want," he said.
US also said that Russia is refocusing its military efforts on the Donbas region which could herald a "longer, more prolonged conflict".
US President Joe Biden says that Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin may be "isolated" and could have placed some of his advisors under "house arrest".
NATO warned that it is not seeing a pull-back of Russian forces in Ukraine and expects "additional offensive actions".
Ukraine's government has sent 45 buses to evacuate civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol, where Russia has declared a local ceasefire following a global outcry over the suffering of civilians trapped by a month of relentless shelling.
Here are the Highlights on the Ukraine-Russia War:
A top United Nations official will visit Moscow this weekend to try to secure a "humanitarian ceasefire" in Ukraine, UN chief Antonio Guterres said Friday.
Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, will fly to Moscow on Sunday then on to Kiev.
The United States is providing Ukraine with supplies and equipment in case Russia deploys chemical or biological weapons, the White House said on Friday, underscoring that this would not compromise domestic preparedness in any form.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths will visit Moscow on April 3 and then will visit Kyiv to discuss the ongoing situation in Ukraine and a potential for a ceasefire, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday.
"My special envoy, Martin Griffiths, was asked by me to pursue a humanitarian ceasefire in Ukraine. He will be flying to Moscow on Sunday and after that he will be going to Kiev," Guterres said during a press conference.
Dozens of valuable churches, historical sites and museums have been damaged by the war in Ukraine, the United Nations' cultural agency said on Friday, adding that it was particularly worried about the northern city of Chernihiv. Read more
Russia is continuing to withdraw some of its forces from Ukraine's northern Kyiv region and they are heading towards Belarus, the local governor said on Friday.
"We are observing the movement of joint (Russian) vehicle columns of various quantities," Governor Oleksandr Pavlyuk wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Almost 300,000 refugees from Ukraine have been registered in Germany as of Friday, according to Germany's Interior Ministry.
The ministry, citing figures from the federal police, said 294,508 refugees have been recorded so far and most of them are women, children or the elderly.
Some Russian troops were still in the "exclusion zone" around the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power station on Friday morning, the head of the Ukrainian agency in charge of the zone said.
Yevhen Kramarenko confirmed on national television that the Russian forces that occupied the power station after invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 had left the plant itself but said some troops had been seen in the exclusion zone outside the territory of the decommissioned power station.
Russian forces are withdrawing from the Chernihiv region of northern Ukraine but have not yet left entirely, the local governor said in a video address on Friday.
"Air and missile strikes are (still) possible in the region, nobody is ruling this out," Governor Viacheslav Chaus said, adding that Ukrainian forces were entering and securing settlements previously held by Russian troops.
An aide to the mayor of Mariupol said on Friday the besieged southern Ukrainian city remained closed for anyone trying to enter and was "very dangerous" for anyone trying to leave.
Russia is offering India steep discounts on the direct sale of oil as mounting international pressure lowers the appetite for its barrels elsewhere following the invasion of Ukraine, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
British military intelligence said on Friday Ukrainian forces have retaken the villages of Sloboda and Lukashivka to the south of Chernihiv and located along main supply routes between the city and Kyiv.
"Ukraine has also continued to make successful but limited counter attacks to the east and north east of Kyiv," Britain's Ministry of Defence said.
Chernihiv and Kyiv have been subjected to continued air and missile strikes despite Russian claims of reducing activity in these areas, the ministry added.
Russian troops on Tuesday left Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant after weeks of occupation, officials in Kyiv said Thursday.
A fire broke out at a fuel storage facility in the Russian city of Belgorod located close to the Ukrainian border, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said, two days after the province was rocked by blasts at an arms depot.
Two people were hurt in Friday's fire, Gladkov said on Telegram, and residents of three city streets were being evacuated.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is demanding foreign buyers pay for Russian gas in roubles from Friday or else have their supplies cut, a move European capitals rejected and which Berlin said amounted to "blackmail".
Russia will not ask the European Union to end sanctions and has a sufficient "margin of safety", the RIA news agency quoted a Russian foreign ministry official as saying on Friday.
"The European Union is not the centre of the universe," Nikolai Kobrinets, the head of the European cooperation department at the ministry, said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday joined allies in saying he does not wish to see Russian President Vladimir Putin at this year's G20 meeting, citing Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
UN atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi was in Russia on Thursday ahead of talks the following day with top Russian officials, after visiting neighbouring Ukraine.
Grossi visited a nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine on Wednesday on his first trip to the country since Russia's invasion raised fears of a nuclear accident.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned of the dangers of the conflict -- the first in a country with a vast nuclear estate.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has made John Sullivan's tough job as US envoy to Moscow even harder as he grapples with the Kremlin's nuclear saber-rattling and threats to sever relations while keeping his embassy running on one-tenth the normal staff.
"It was really bad two and a half years ago," Sullivan remembered of his arrival in Jan. 2020. "It's gotten worse."
Severe staff cuts imposed by Russia's government have not yet forced him to clean embassy toilets or buff floors, as rumored in Washington, though he said he knows how to do both.
Ukraine will soon be able to better protect its skies and cities from Russian attacks because it expects "super modern" military equipment from the United States and Britain, Ukraine's ambassador to Japan, Sergiy Korsunsky, said on Friday.
"They still have superiority in air force, in airplanes and missiles, and we expect to begin to receive super-modern equipment from the United States and Britain to protect our skies and our cities," Korsunsky told a news conference.
Russia may be repositioning some of its forces around the Ukrainian capital Kyiv to send them to the eastern Donbas region, where Ukrainian forces have been putting up fierce resistance, the Pentagon said Thursday.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby also said that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has decided to keep elements of the 82nd Airborne Division in Europe for the time being along with an aircraft carrier strike group in the Mediterranean.
Russia has moved a "small number" -- perhaps 20 percent -- of its troops from around Kyiv after failing to capture the city, which continues to be targeted by Russian airstrikes, Kirby said.
The Pentagon said on Thursday it was not clear that Russia's convoy of military vehicles to Kyiv, which once stretched some 40 miles, even exists anymore after failing to accomplish its mission.
"I don't even know if it still exists at this point... They never really accomplished their mission," said Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby.
The stalled convoy became a symbol of Russia's battlefield difficulties and had been repeatedly attacked by Ukrainian forces during the first weeks of the more than month-long invasion.
US President Joe Biden said Thursday that Russian leader Vladimir Putin may be "isolated" and could have placed some of his advisors under "house arrest."
In his first public remarks on Western assessments about Kremlin tensions over the war in Ukraine, Biden also said he was "skeptical" about Moscow's claim to be scaling back its onslaught in parts of the country.
