Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

European buyers of Russian gas faced a deadline to start paying in roubles on Friday, while negotiations aimed at ending the five-week war were set to resume even as Ukraine braced for further attacks in the south and east. * 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.

European buyers of Russian gas faced a deadline to start paying in roubles on Friday, while negotiations aimed at ending the five-week war were set to resume even as Ukraine braced for further attacks in the south and east. 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* The Ukrainian state nuclear company said all of the Russian forces occupying the Chernobyl nuclear power station had withdrawn from the territory of the defunct plant.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 * European governments rejected Putin's energy ultimatum, with the continent's biggest recipient of Russian gas, Germany, calling it "blackmail". * U.S. President Joe Biden announced the largest release from the U.S. emergency oil reserve to bring down gasoline prices that have soared during the war. * The war also threatens to disrupt global food supplies, with a U.S. government official sharing images of what they said was damage to grain storage facilities in Ukraine, the world's fourth-largest gain exporter in the 2020/21 season. DIPLOMACY * Russia and Ukraine are to resume peace talks online on April 1, a senior Ukrainian official said.

HUMANITARIAN CONCERNS * 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, Alexandra Hudson and Michael Perry; editing by Grant McCool and Himani Sarkar)