Ukraine's military said on Tuesday residents should brace for more indiscriminate Russian shelling of critical infrastructure, as US President Joe Biden issued one of his strongest warnings yet that Moscow is considering using chemical weapons.
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Russian troops have failed to capture any major Ukrainian city more than four weeks into their invasion, and increasingly are resorting to causing massive destruction to residential areas using air strikes, long-range missiles and artillery.
The southern port of Mariupol has become a focal point of Russia's assault and lies largely in ruins with bodies lying on the streets, but attacks were also reported to have intensified on the second city, Kharkiv, on Monday.
Ukraine's armed forces said in a statement issued on Tuesday that Russian forces were expected to continue to attack critical infrastructure using "high-precision weapons and indiscriminate munitions."
Without citing evidence, Biden said Russia's false accusations that Kyiv had biological and chemical weapons illustrated that Russian President Vladimir Putin was considering using them himself.
Putin's "back is against the wall and now he's talking about new false flags he's setting up including, asserting that we in America have biological as well as chemical weapons in Europe, simply not true," Biden said at a Business Roundtable event.
"They are also suggesting that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine. That's a clear sign he's considering using both of those."
The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Biden also told businesses to be alert for possible cyberattacks by Russia. "It's part of Russia's playbook," he said in a statement.
Washington and its allies have previously accused Russia of spreading an unproven claim that Ukraine had a biological weapons program as a possible prelude to using such weapons itself, but Biden's remarks on Monday were some of his strongest yet on the subject.
Russia says it does not attack civilians although the devastation wrought on Ukrainian towns such as Mariupol and Kharkiv are reminiscent of previous Russian assaults on cities in Chechnya and Syria.
Biden is due to travel to Europe this week for meetings with allied leaders to discuss tighter sanctions on Russia, on top of the unprecedented financial penalties already announced. Ahead of the trip he discussed Russia's "brutal" tactics in a call with European leaders on Monday, the White House said.
Russia's siege and bombardment of Mariupol port, which European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called "a massive war crime," is increasing pressure for action.
But EU foreign ministers on Monday disagreed on whether and how to include energy in sanctions, with Germany saying the bloc was too dependent on Russian oil to declare an embargo.
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The conflict has driven almost a quarter of Ukraine's 44 million people from their homes, and Germany predicted the refugee number could reach as high as 10 million in coming weeks.
Ukraine on Monday rejected a Russian demand to stop defending besieged Mariupol, where hundreds of thousands of civilians are suffering through Russian bombardments laying waste to their city.
Ukrainian officials hope that Moscow will negotiate a withdrawal. Both sides hinted last week at progress in talks on a formula which would include some kind of "neutrality" for Ukraine, though details were scarce.
Japan reacted angrily on Tuesday after Russia withdrew from peace treaty talks citing Tokyo's decision to join the international campaign of sanctions. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Russia's decision was "completely unacceptable."
Meanwhile, the remaining members of the one shift of technical staff who had been on duty at Chernobyl's radioactive waste facilities since Russian forces seized the site last month have been relieved, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Monday.
For more than three weeks the Ukraine facilities, next to the now-defunct power plant that in 1986 was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, were operated by a single shift of staff that happened to be on duty when Russian forces took control on Feb. 24. All had been unable to leave until Sunday.
For weeks the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been saying the situation, which meant that the staff on duty were exhausted and working under extreme pressure, posed a growing risk to the site's safety and called for them to be rotated out.
"Ukraine's regulatory authority said about half of the outgoing shift of technical staff left the site of the 1986 accident yesterday and the rest followed today, with the exception of thirteen staff members who declined to rotate," the IAEA said in a statement.
The Ukrainian regulator said most of the Ukrainian guards who have also been there since it was seized remained at the site, the IAEA added. The agency said last week that there were 211 technical staff and guards at the site, without breaking that number down further. Read full storyThe departing technical staff have been replaced by Ukrainian colleagues who like them are based in the nearby town of Slavutych, the IAEA said, citing the Ukrainian regulator.
"The new work shift ... includes two supervisors instead of the usual one to ensure that there is back-up available on the site, the regulator said," according to the IAEA statement.
The IAEA added, also citing the Ukrainian regulator, that an agreement had been reached on how to organize staff rotations.
Separately, the Foreign Ministry announced Monday that Israeli-Ukrainian citizen Tatiana Kumok and her parents, who were taken when Russian forces invaded Melitopol, have been released.
Kumok reported in a Facebook post that the Russians had taken her father, and then her mother. Friends said that Kumok herself had been taken to an undisclosed location.
