Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now

* Russian forces have seized Kreminna, a city of over 18,000 people in eastern Ukraine, and Ukrainian troops have withdrawn, the regional governor said. * Russia handed over 60 soldiers and 16 civilians to Ukraine in the fifth such exchange of prisoners of war, the Ukrainian deputy prime minister said.

Russia launched its long-awaited all-out assault on east Ukraine, unleashing thousands of troops in what Ukraine described as the Battle of the Donbas, a campaign to seize two provinces and salvage a battlefield victory. FIGHTING

* The aim of Russia's new offensive in eastern Ukraine is to seize all of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, establish a land link between those territories and Crimea, and destroy Ukraine's armed forces, Ukraine's defense ministry said. * Russia's new offensive in eastern Ukraine will fail because Moscow's forces lack the strength to break through Ukrainian defenses, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.

* Russia's defense ministry said it had opened up a corridor for Ukrainian forces who wanted to take up a Russian offer to lay down their arms and safely leave the Azovstal steelworks in the besieged port of Mariupol. * Russian forces have seized Kreminna, a city of over 18,000 people in eastern Ukraine, and Ukrainian troops have withdrawn, the regional governor said.

* Russia handed over 60 soldiers and 16 civilians to Ukraine in the fifth such exchange of prisoners of war, the Ukrainian deputy prime minister said. * At least three people were killed and 16 wounded in the Russian shelling of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, the regional governor said.

DIPLOMACY * U.S. President Joe Biden will hold a call with allies on Tuesday to discuss Ukraine, including on holding Russia accountable, the White House said.

* Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters it was hard to say when the next direct peace talks would be possible as Russia was now "seriously betting" on its offensive in eastern Ukraine, the second phase of its military operation. ECONOMY

* Russia's invasion has damaged or destroyed up to 30% of Ukraine's infrastructure at a cost of $100 billion, a Ukrainian minister said, adding reconstruction could be achieved in two years using frozen Russian assets to help finance it. * Russia flagged a likely further cut in interest rates and more budget spending to help the economy adapt to biting Western sanctions as it heads for its deepest contraction since 1994.

QUOTES "Kreminna is under the control of the 'Orcs'. They have entered the city," the province's Ukrainian governor, Sergiy Gaidai, told a briefing, invoking the goblin-like creatures who appear in J.R.R. Tolkein's fantasy books.