Civilians kept fleeing from areas of eastern Ukraine on Tuesday ahead of an anticipated Russian offensive, while Kyiv said it was checking reports that Russian forces had used chemical weapons in the besieged port city of Mariupol.
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The battle for Mariupol was reaching a decisive phase, with Ukrainian marines holed up in the Azovstal industrial district.
Should the Russians seize Azovstal, they would be in full control of Mariupol, the lynchpin between Russian-held areas to the west and east. The city has already been laid waste by weeks of Russian bombardments that have killed possibly thousands of civilians.
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said the government was checking unverified information that Russia may have used chemical weapons while besieging Mariupol.
"There is a theory that these could be phosphorous munitions," Malyar said in televized comments.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday night that Russia could resort to chemical weapons as it amassed troops in the eastern Donbas region for a new assault on Mariupol. He did not say if they actually had been used.
The United States and Britain said they were trying to verify the reports. If Russia had used chemical weapons, "all options were on the table" in response, British Junior Defense Minister James Heappey said in London.
The Russian Defense Ministry has not yet responded to a Reuters request for comment. Russian-backed separatist forces in the east denied using chemical weapons in Mariupol, the Interfax news agency reported.
But should it prove to be the case, it would mark a dangerous new development in a war that has already left a trail of death of destruction since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops over the border on Feb. 24.
About a quarter of Ukraine's 44 million population have been forced from their homes, cities turned into rubble, and thousands of people have been killed or injured – many of them civilians.
Putin calls the action a "special military operation" to demilitarize and "denazify" Ukraine but it has drawn condemnation and alarm in the West, which has imposed a wide range of sanctions to squeeze the Russian economy.
After their troops got bogged down in the face of Ukrainian resistance, the Russians abandoned their bid to capture the capital Kyiv for now. But they are redoubling their efforts in the east and Ukrainian forces are digging in to face a new offensive.
The governor of Luhansk region, Serhiy Gaidai, urged residents to evacuate using five humanitarian corridors agreed for the east.
"It's far scarier to remain and burn in your sleep from a Russian shell," he wrote on social media. "Evacuate, with every day the situation is getting worse. Take your essential items and head to the pickup point."
In all, nine humanitarian corridors had been agreed for Tuesday, including one for private cars from Mariupol, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
In its morning briefing on the conflict, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said that aside from trying to take control of Mariupol, Russian forces were also intent on capturing Popasna, a town about two-hour drive west of Luhansk, and were set to launch an offensive in the direction of Kurakhove, in the Donetsk region.
The Ukrainian military said its troops had repulsed attacks in both Luhansk and Donetsk.
President Zelenskiy pleaded overnight for more weapons from the West to help it end the siege of Mariupol and fend off the expected Russian offensive in the east.
"Unfortunately we are not getting as much as we need to end this war faster ... in particular, to lift the blockade of Mariupol," he said.
The departure of Russian forces from the outskirts of Kyiv brought to light allegations of war crimes including executions and rape of civilians. Moscow dismisses the allegations as Ukrainian and Western provocations and has also accused Ukrainian forces of sexual violence.
Senior UN official Sima Bahous told the UN Security Council on Monday that while all allegations must by independently investigated, "the brutality displayed against Ukrainian civilians has raised all red flags".
"We are increasingly hearing of rape and sexual violence," she said.
Kateryna Cherepakha, president of rights group La Strada-Ukraine, told the council via video: "Violence and rape is used now as a weapon of war by Russian invaders in Ukraine."
Russia's deputy UN ambassador denied the allegations and accused Ukraine and allies of "a clear intention to present Russian soldiers as sadists and rapists".
Russia's Defense Ministry said Ukraine's government was being directed by the United States to sow false evidence of Russian violence against civilians despite what it cast as Moscow's "unprecedented measures to save civilians".
Putin is scheduled to meet Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Tuesday to discuss Ukraine and Western sanctions, news agencies in Russia and Belarus reported. Belarus is a key staging area for Russian forces.
Meanwhile, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said Monday that he had urged Putin to end the invasion of Ukraine and raised the issue of "serious war crimes" committed by the Russian military.
Nehammer was the first European leader to meet Putin in Moscow since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
In a statement released after the meeting, the Austrian chancellor said his primary message to Putin in the "very direct, open and tough" talks was that "this war needs to end, because in war both sides can only lose."
Nehammer told Putin all those responsible for war crimes in the Ukrainian city of Bucha and elsewhere would be "held to account."
He also stressed the need to open humanitarian corridors so that civilians trapped in cities under attack can access basic supplies like food and water, according to the statement.
The Austrian leader called the trip to Moscow his "duty" to exhaust every possibility for ending the violence in Ukraine, coming just two days after travelling to Kyiv for talks with Zelenskyy.
Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, Nehammer said face-to-face talks to look "each other in the eye, discussing the horrors of war," could have a greater impact over the long term.
But he said he walked away from the meeting without much optimism for an end to the war any time soon.
"It might be necessary to do it 100 times," Nehammer said of the meeting. "But I think it's necessary to do it, so that peace reigns again and the people of Ukraine can live safely."
European Union-member Austria supported the 27-nation bloc's sanctions against Russia, though it so far has opposed cutting off deliveries of Russian gas. The country is militarily neutral and is not a member of NATO.
But Nehammer and other Austrian officials have been keen to stress that military neutrality does not mean moral neutrality.
"We are militarily neutral, but have a clear position on the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine," Nehammer wrote on Twitter Sunday when announcing his trip to Moscow. "It must stop!"
Nehammer said he told Putin the EU is "as united as it's ever been" on the issue of sanctions, and that these will remain in place - and may even be strengthened - as long as Ukrainians continue to die.
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Earlier Monday, Austrian foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg said Nehammer decided to make the Moscow trip after meeting with Zelenskyy in Kyiv and following contacts with the leaders of Turkey, Germany and the European Union.
Schallenberg said ahead of a meeting with his EU counterparts in Luxembourg that it was an effort to "seize every chance to end the humanitarian hell" in Ukraine.
He added that "every voice that makes clear to President Putin what reality looks like outside the walls of Kremlin is not a wasted voice."
