Russia-Ukraine war: Key things to know about the conflict

Russian forces continued their assault on Ukraine on Monday, firing on suburbs around the capital of Kyiv and other cities, even as the two countries held another round of diplomatic talks, which ended without a breakthrough.

The fighting, now in its third week, continued to exact a human toll. Thousands of soldiers and civilians have died and the war has forced more than 2.8 million people to flee Ukraine. Some of the exhausted refugees have shared heartbreaking stories about leaving family members behind, with one simply saying: “I wish this war would end."

Here are some key things to know about the conflict:

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN AND AROUND KYIV?

Russian troops refocused their efforts to seize Kyiv on Monday, firing artillery on suburbs, a local official said on Ukrainian television.

The official also said a town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, had been killed in fighting there and shells fell on the towns of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst conflict during Russia’s stalled attempt to take the capital.

Two people were killed when artillery hit a nine-story residential building in a northern district of the city early Monday, destroying apartments on several floors and igniting a fire. Ukrainian authorities said two people died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire.

WHAT'S HAPPENING ELSEWHERE IN UKRAINE?

Air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns all around the country overnight, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west.

The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported Monday that airstrikes hit residential buildings near the important southern city of Mykolaiv, as well as in the eastern city of Kharkiv. Explosions also rang out overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.

Russia’s military said 20 civilians were killed by a Ukrainian ballistic missile strike on Monday in the eastern city of Donetsk, in the separatist Donetsk region. The claim couldn’t be independently verified.

But overall, nearly all of Russia’s offensives remained stalled Monday after making little progress over the weekend, according to a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s assessment. The official said Russian forces have launched more than 900 missiles but Ukraine’s airspace is still contested, and Russia has not achieved total air superiority.

— Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

WHAT'S HAPPENING TO UKRAINIAN CIVILIANS?

A top Red Cross official said the war has become “ nothing short of a nightmare ” for those who remain in besieged cities.

The Associated Press has learned that a pregnant woman and her baby died after Russian forces bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol.

In video and photos taken by AP journalists after Wednesday's attack on the hospital, the woman was seen stroking her bloodied lower abdomen as rescuers rushed her through the rubble, her blanched face mirroring her shock. It was among the most brutal moments so far in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

At a hospital where the woman was transferred, on the outskirts of Mariupol, surgeon Timur Marin said the baby showed no signs of life after a Caesarean section and attempts to resuscitate the mother were unsuccessful.

The U.N. has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths, though it believes the true toll is much higher. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office said that at least 85 children are among the dead.

The Ukrainian government meanwhile announced plans for new humanitarian aid and evacuation corridors Monday. In one rare sign of progress, Mariupol’s city council said a convoy of 160 civilian cars left the besieged port city along a designated humanitarian route, after many previous attempts at evacuations collapsed.

WHAT ARE UKRAINIAN REFUGEES SAYING?

In the Polish border town of Przemysl, exhausted refugees said they wished the violence would stop.

Alexandra Beltuygova, a 33-year-old who fled from Dnipro, a city between Kyiv and Mariupol, said she spends her days crying from the pain of having to leave her husband and parents behind, and she wishes the war would end. Many of the displaced are women and children, as men between the ages of 18 and 60 were not allowed to leave Ukraine in case they are needed to fight.

Anjela, 55, a Ukrainian refugee from Poltava who wouldn’t give her last name, said after arriving in Poland that only a NATO intervention could end the violence in Ukraine. Zelenzkyy has repeatedly asked NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, but military experts have said that is unlikely.

“I don’t know when I will see my husband. I don’t know when my children will return home,” Anjela said. “I beg you, it depends only on you! Close the sky, everything else we will do ourselves.”

In Suceava in northern Romania, 28-year-old Lesia Ostrovska watched over her 1-year-old son as her 8-year-old daughter played nearby with other children at a refugee center. Ostrovska, who is from Chernivtsi in western Ukraine, said: “It’s hard with kids, in the bus, here in this situation … We hope that the war is finished soon and we can go back home.”

Valeria Varenko, 9, traveled from Kyiv to Barabas, Hungary, with her mother Julia and her little brother. Valeria said she wanted to tell children left behind not to touch any objects in the street because “they could be bombs which can hurt them very much.”

WHAT HAS THE AP DIRECTLY WITNESSED OR CONFIRMED?

After Russian forces shelled a nine-story apartment building in the northern Obolonskyi district of Kyiv, firefighters worked to rescue survivors, painstakingly carrying an injured woman on a stretcher away from the blackened and still smoking building.

In the besieged port city of Mariupol, where the war has caused some of the greatest human suffering, residents rushed to shelter inside a building as an unidentified plane passed overhead. Natalia Koldash was among those who took shelter in a hallway. Koldash said residents are not being kept informed.

“We know nothing. It looks like we are living in a deep forest,” Koldash said. "They should have told us something at least about what’s going on and where.”

A Russian airstrike near a Ukrainian checkpoint caused extensive damage to a downtown Kyiv neighborhood on Monday. Ukrainian officials said the airstrike killed one person and injured six others.

Kateryna Lot said she was in her apartment as her child did homework online when they heard a loud explosion.

“The child became hysterical, our windows and the balcony were shattered, part of the floor fell down,” Lot said. “It was very, very scary. The child started screaming so we took him, ran to the door and down to the shelter.”

HOW ARE TALKS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE GOING?

A fourth round of talks were held Monday but ended without a breakthrough after several hours, according to Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak. Podolyak said the negotiators took “a technical pause” and planned to meet again Tuesday.

Over the weekend he said that Russia had been “listening carefully to our proposals.” Monday's talks were supposed to discuss “peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees.”

Zelenskyy has called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with him directly, a request that has not been met by the Kremlin.

Also Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied media reports alleging that Russia asked China for military assistance to help advance its offensive in Ukraine.

“No, Russia has its own potential to continue the operation, which, as we have said, is unfolding in accordance with the plan and will be completed on time and in full,” Peskov told his daily conference call with reporters.

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