Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

Ukraine's top security official denied accusations by Moscow that Kyiv was behind an attack on an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod that serves as one of Russia's main logistics hubs for the war. FIGHTING * Russian forces are being pushed back around Kyiv but fighting is still fierce in some areas near the capital, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukraine's top security official denied accusations by Moscow that Kyiv was behind an attack on an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod that serves as one of Russia's main logistics hubs for the war. FIGHTING * Russian forces are being pushed back around Kyiv but fighting is still fierce in some areas near the capital, Ukrainian officials said. * In Irpin, a commuter suburb northwest of Kyiv that had been one of the main battlegrounds for weeks, now back in Ukrainian hands, volunteers and emergency workers carried the dead on stretchers out of the rubble. The town of Bucha, near Irpin, is also back in Ukrainian hands, its mayor said. * The International Committee of the Red Cross said a convoy it had organised to evacuate civilians trapped in the besieged and devastated port city of Mariupol had had to turn around as the conditions did not exist for their safe passage.

ENERGY * European governments and companies are working on a common approach to Russia's demand that they pay for its gas in roubles as the threat of an imminent supply halt eases. * Under a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin, foreign buyers of Russian gas were required to open rouble accounts in state-controlled Gazprombank from Friday to allow foreign currency to be converted to roubles. But the Kremlin said it would not immediately turn off the taps. ECONOMY * Russia's bombardment of Mariupol has caused at least $10 billion in damage to infrastructure, according to a preliminary estimate by local authorities.

DIPLOMACY * Russia and Ukraine resumed peace talks online as Moscow said it was preparing its response to Ukrainian proposals. * Russia will boost its use of non-Western currencies for trade with countries such as India, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a visit to New Delhi. * China offered the European Union assurances that it would seek peace in Ukraine but said this would be on its own terms, deflecting pressure for a tougher stance towards Russia. QUOTE * "When our army came then I fully understood we had been liberated. It was happiness beyond imagination. I pray for all this to end and for them never to come back," said Lilia Ristich, sitting on a playground swing in Irpin with her young son Artur. (Compiled by Philippa Fletcher and Gareth Jones)