Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

* Ukrainian prisoners of war held in the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics number about 8,000, Luhansk official Rodion Miroshnik was quoted by TASS news agency as saying. DIPLOMACY * Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy savaged suggestions that Kyiv give up territory and make concessions to end the war with Russia, saying the idea smacked of attempts to appease Nazi Germany in 1938. * Russia will not win its war in Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin must not dictate the terms of any peace deal, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Advancing Russian forces came closer to surrounding Ukrainian troops in the east, briefly seizing positions on the last highway out of a crucial pair of Ukrainian-held cities before being beaten back, a Ukrainian official said. FIGHTING

* Serhiy Gaidai, governor of Luhansk province, acknowledged that Ukrainian forces were retreating before Moscow's offensive in the eastern Donbas region, but said the last road out of Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk remained outside Russian control. * Some 150 people were buried in a mass grave in Lysychansk and police are collecting more bodies, said the governor.

* Ukraine's armed forces said Russia had shelled more than 40 towns in the Donbas region in the past 24 hours, destroying or damaging 47 civilian sites, including 38 homes and a school. * Ukrainian prisoners of war held in the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics number about 8,000, Luhansk official Rodion Miroshnik was quoted by TASS news agency as saying.

DIPLOMACY * Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy savaged suggestions that Kyiv give up territory and make concessions to end the war with Russia, saying the idea smacked of attempts to appease Nazi Germany in 1938.

* Russia will not win its war in Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin must not dictate the terms of any peace deal, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the World Economic Forum at Davos. * British foreign minister Liz Truss accused Putin of holding the world to ransom over food, responding to a question about whether she supported lifting sanctions on Russia if it allowed Ukraine's grain exports via the Black Sea to resume.

* Ankara is in negotiations with Moscow and Kyiv to open a corridor via Turkey for grain exports from Ukraine, a senior Turkish official told Reuters. ECONOMY

* Russia is advancing a new law allowing it to take control of businesses of Western companies that decide to leave in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, raising the stakes for multinationals trying to exit. * The European Union can still strike a deal on a Russian oil embargo in the coming days or look to "other instruments" if no agreement is reached, Germany's economy minister Robert Habeck said at Group of Seven talks in Berlin.

QUOTES "Everything now is focused on the Donbas," said Vadym Denisenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior ministry.

COMING UP * An EU summit on May 30-31 could see divisions between member states who want to take a hard line against Moscow and those calling for a ceasefire. 

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)