Western governments were preparing Wednesday to impose tougher sanctions against Russia, as Ukraine continued to document and investigate widespread alleged killings of civilians and other reported war crimes.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy kept up demands for war-crimes trials for Russian troops and their leaders while warning they were regrouping for fresh assaults on Ukraine's east and south. The Ukrainian military said Russia was preparing for an offensive in Ukraine's east, with the aim "to establish complete control over the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions."
Thousands of Ukrainians who live in the Donbas region were fleeing west as Russia was stepping up its offensive.
Overnight, Russian forces attacked a fuel depot and a factory in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, the region's governor Valentyn Reznichenko said on the Telegram messaging app early Wednesday. The number of casualties was unclear.
"The night was alarming and difficult. The enemy attacked our area from the air and hit the oil depot and one of the plants. The oil depot with fuel was destroyed. Rescuers are still putting out the flames at the plant," Reznichenko wrote.
Police in the Romanian capital Bucharest said a car rammed the gate of the Russian Embassy early Wednesday, bursting into flames and killing the driver. There was no immediate information on a possible motive or other details.
The sedan rammed into the gate at about 6 a.m. Wednesday but did not enter the Bucharest embassy compound. Video of the aftermath showed the car engulfed in flames as security personnel run through the area. According to police, firefighters who arrived at the scene were able to put the fire out but the driver died at the scene. The embassy said no employees were injured.
In Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region, shelling of Rubizhne city on Tuesday killed one person and injured five more, its governor Serhiy Haidai said on Telegram.
Parts of Donetsk and Luhansk have been under the control of Russia-backed rebels since 2014 and are recognized by Moscow as independent states. So far, Ukrainian forces have been holding back Russian troops trying to push east but remain outnumbered in both troops and equipment, Zelenskyy said in a video address to his country late Tuesday.
Evidence of what appears to be intentional killings of civilians in Bucha and other towns before Russian forces withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv has drawn a global outcry. Western nations have expelled scores of Moscow's diplomats and are expected to roll out more sanctions Wednesday.
They would include a ban on all new investment in Russia, a senior US administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the upcoming announcement.
The European Union's executive branch, meanwhile, proposed a ban on coal imports from Russia, worth an estimated 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) per year. It would be the first time the 27-nation bloc has sanctioned the country's lucrative energy industry over the war.
In an address Tuesday to the UN Security Council, Zelenskyy said civilians in towns around Kyiv were tortured, shot in the back of the head, thrown down wells, blown up with grenades in their apartments, and crushed to death by tanks while in cars.
Those who carried out the killings and those who gave the orders "must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes" in front of a tribunal similar to the one established at Nuremberg after World War II, he said.
"But we don't have a choice – the fate of our land and of our people is being decided," he said. "We know what we are fighting for. And we will do everything to win."
Russia has insisted its troops have committed no war crimes.
Moscow's UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said "not a single local person" suffered from violence while Bucha was under Russian control. Reiterating Kremlin comments, he said scenes of bodies in the streets were "a crude forgery" staged by the Ukrainians.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said images from Bucha revealed "not the random act of a rogue unit" but "a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities." He said the reports of atrocities were "more than credible."
The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court at The Hague opened an investigation a month ago into possible war crimes in Ukraine.
British defense officials said Wednesday that 160,000 people remain trapped by Russian airstrikes and heavy fighting in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol.
The Defense Ministry intelligence update said the city has "no light, communication, medicine, heat or water." It accused Russian forces of deliberately preventing humanitarian access, "likely to pressure defenders to surrender."
The International Committee of the Red Cross's efforts to get humanitarian convoys into Mariupol have failed. Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Russian forces stopped buses accompanied by Red Cross workers from traveling to Mariupol, which had a pre-war population of over 400,000. She said Russian troops allowed 1,496 civilians to leave the Sea of Azov port on Tuesday.
While both Ukrainian and Russian representatives sent optimistic signals following their latest round of talks a week ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow will not accept a Ukrainian demand that a prospective peace deal include an immediate pullout of troops followed by a Ukrainian referendum on the agreement.
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Also on Wednesday, European Council President Charles Michel said EU countries should think about ways to offer asylum to Russian soldiers willing to desert Ukraine battlefields.
European Council president calls on EU countries to consider offering asylum to Russian soldiers willing to desert Ukraine battlefields.
During an address to the European Parliament, Michel expressed his "outrage at crimes against humanity, against innocent civilians in Bucha and in many other cities," then called on Russian soldiers to disobey orders.
"If you want no part in killing your Ukrainian brothers and sisters, if you don't want to be a criminal, drop your arms, stop fighting, leave the battlefield," he said.
Endorsing an idea previously circulated by some EU lawmakers, Michel added that granting asylum to Russian deserters is "a valuable idea that should be pursued."
Meanwhile, Turkey's embassy in Ukraine said on Tuesday that the office moved its operations back to Kyiv after concern for staff safety prompted a temporary relocation closer to Ukraine's borders last month. The embassy was moved to Chernivtsi, a city in Ukraine's west which is close to the Romanian border.
"Dear citizens and Ukrainian friends, we had temporarily shifted our activities to the city of Chernivtsi, which has turned into our logistics center for the evacuation efforts," the embassy said on its official Twitter account.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
