The Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who is sanctioned by European nations over the invasion, was part of Moscow’s delegation at peace talks in Istanbul, Reuters quotes Turkish leaders as saying.

They claimed he is “sincerely” working to end the war that was started and is still being aggressively pursued by his own political ally, Vladimir Putin.

Abramovich made a surprise appearance at Tuesday’s talks in Istanbul. However, video footage showed him sat among observers rather than with the two negotiating teams.

Speaking to reporters on a flight from Uzbekistan, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said Abramovich’s presence showed Putin “believes, trusts him”, according to broadcaster NTV and others.

Abramovich participated in the negotiations as part of the Russian delegation. Rather than looking at who was at the table, we should look at on whose behalf they were there.

The Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told the broadcaster A Haber Abramovich has been liaising between Kyiv and Moscow since the 24 February invasion and working “sincerely” to end the fighting.

Of course, official talks are important, negotiations are important, but public opinion is sensitive, everyone wants to maintain their position, and there are channels that should be kept open between leaders and countries. Here, Abramovich plays a useful role.

According to Reuters, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said Abramovich was not an official member of the Russian delegation, but acknowledged his presence to “enable certain contacts”.

Turkey, a Nato member, shares a maritime border with Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea, has good ties with both and has offered to mediate. It has supported Kyiv, but also opposes sanctions on Moscow; including measures against Abramovich and other Russian billionaires.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, told the Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, conditions were not yet in place for a ceasefire in Ukraine, the latter told a news conference, when asked about a telephone call with the former the previous day.

According to the Reuters news agency, Draghi also said Putin told him current gas contracts remained in force and that European firms will continue to pay in euros and dollars, rather than in roubles.

What I understood, but I may be wrong, is that the conversion of the payment … is an internal matter of the Russian Federation.

Asked about increased defence spending following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Draghi said Italy would reach the Nato goal of spending 2% of GDP on defence in 2028, adding that this was not in dispute among members of his coalition.

However, Draghi said that the government’s upcoming economic forecasting document would not spell out a specific increase in defence spending.

More than 5m items of medical supplies have been given to Ukraine, helping to save tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives, the UK government is claiming.

Since the Russian invasion was launched, 13 flights carrying ventilators and other medical supplies have left the UK. Lifesaving medicines, intensive care equipment and wound packs have been donated by NHS England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The UK’s health and social care secretary, Sajid Javid, has said:

The appalling atrocities inflicted on the Ukrainians by Putin’s evil attacks are causing untold misery to millions of people.

The invasion has created a medical emergency and the UK has acted swiftly to give our Ukrainian friends the medical support they need which has helped save tens of thousands of lives.

The UK’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said:

The UK is continuing to play a leading role in the response to Russia’s unprovoked attacks on the Ukrainian people, with UK aid supplies flowing into Ukraine and its border regions.

From medicines and equipment, to food, generators, blankets and hygiene kits, we are working with the government of Ukraine, our trusted humanitarian partners and friends in the region to help those most in need.

The number of Ukrainian refugees who have been officially registered in Spain has reached nearly 30,000, says the country’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez.

He added that the number of Ukrainian refugees registered was likely to rise to 70,000 in the next few days.

The UK has said that it has imposed further sanctions of prominent Russian figures and military leaders, including Sergey Brilev, a propagandist who owns the Russia Today (RT) news channel.

Other Russian figures facing sanctions includes Aleksandr Zharov, chief executive of Gazprom-Media, Alexey Nikolov the managing director of RT and Anton Anisimov, the head of Sputnik International Broadcasting were also sanctioned.

Col-Gen Mikhail Mizintsev, dubbed “the butcher of Mariupol”, is also among the 14 new additions to the sanctions list.

Commenting on the sanctions, Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, said:

Putin’s war on Ukraine is based on a torrent of lies. Britain has helped lead the world in exposing Kremlin disinformation, and this latest batch of sanctions hits the shameless propagandists who push out Putin’s fake news and narratives.

We will keep on going with more sanctions to ramp up the pressure on Russia and ensure Putin loses in Ukraine. Nothing and no one is off the table.

The director general of the The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Robert Mardini, has called on Ukraine and Russia to agree on a safe evacuation of civilians from Mariupol and other frontline areas.

Speaking to Reuters, Mardini said that supplies were running low, and that up to 170,000 residents were trapped with no power.

To date the ICRC has so far led two evacuations of civilians from the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy.

As reported earlier, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has appeared in the Netherlands via video link and asked the Dutch parliament for weapons, reconstruction aid and to halt all business with Russia in response to the invasion of his country.

The opposition Labour party leader of the Netherlands, Lilianne Ploumen, called on the government of the prime minister, Mark Rutte, to urgently implement EU sanctions and quickly target the assets because we can “no longer justify this to Ukraine”.

Some background:

• Roughly 20% of Dutch natural gas comes from Russia, which has become an increasingly important trading partner for the Netherlands in recent years.
• The Dutch, along with other EU countries including Germany, are looking for other energy sources, but quick alternatives are few and global supplies limited.
  Zelenskiy asked the Dutch to “adopt a city” in Ukraine to focus postwar reconstruction efforts.
• The Netherlands has supplied Ukrainian forces with military equipment, including anti-tank rockets and Patriot air defence systems and is also supporting Nato’s increased presence along the military alliance’s eastern flank.
• The Dutch have so far been unable to effectively freeze or seize tens of billions of euros in Russian assets registered in the Netherlands, due to complex tax structures that make it difficult to identify ultimate owners of corporate holdings and property.
• A letter to parliament from the finance ministry on 22 March aid €392m ($431.24 million) in Russian assets and transactions had been frozen under EU sanctions imposed since the invasion on 24 February.

As well as appearing before the Australian parliament today, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has appeared in the Netherlands via video link and asked the Dutch parliament for weapons, reconstruction aid and to halt all business with Russia in response to the invasion of his country.

“Stronger sanctions are needed so that Russia doesn’t have a chance to pursue this war further in Europe,” Reuters quote him telling lawmakers. “Stop all trade with Russia.”

The US said on Wednesday that Russian forces had begun to pull out of the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power site, which they seized on the first day of the invasion on 24 February.

An employee at Ukraine’s exclusion zone management agency claimed on Facebook that some soldiers had been taken to a special medical facility with acute radiation sickness, but this has not been confirmed.

On Monday workers at the site separately alleged to Reuters that soldiers had driven their armoured vehicles without radiation protection through a highly toxic zone called the “Red Forest”, kicking up clouds of radioactive dust.

Kim Willsher, our Paris correspondent who visited Chernobyl in 1990, writes:

“If either account is accurate it would suggest a remarkable level of either ignorance of what happened at Chernobyl on 26 April 1986 when the nuclear plant’s Reactor 4 exploded after an experiment went wrong, or criminal recklessness. The ‘Red Forest’ is so named because the tops of the pine trees around the nuclear plant glowed red from the radiation they absorbed after the catastrophe.

The contaminated trees were later dug up and buried, but seeds from them were taken and grown to see what effect the radiation had on them. When I visited in 1990, scientists at the Chernobyl Research Centre showed me the result: saplings, many with bizarre mutations, some with needles growing backwards. Scientists estimated the contaminated area would not be safe for 24,000 years, give or take a thousand.

Before the war, tourists could visit around the area, but only with a permit and with official tour guides who have Geiger counters and know where to go. There are still many radioactive ‘hot-spots’ and no go areas.

It is possible the Russian troops did not know of the danger. On the day after the disaster, it was the sixth item on the Soviet news and locals were kept in the dark as radiation rained down on them. In 2019, when the Chernobyl mini-series was broadcast, Vladimir Putin dismissed it as American misinformation and said Russia would make its own ‘version’ of the tragedy blaming the CIA.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has told the Australian parliament that his country is “undefeatable” against Russia as long as it can count on the support of the global community.

In a virtual speech to MPs and senators in Canberra, the Ukrainian president requested Australia send Bushmaster armoured vehicles to assist in the fight against Russia, saying they would “do much more for our common freedom and security than staying parked on your land”.

“You have very good armoured personal vehicles, Bushmasters, that could help Ukraine substantially, and other pieces of equipment that could strengthen our position in terms of armaments,” Zelenskiy said.

Zelenskiy accused Vladimir Putin of “nuclear blackmail” and said that an unchecked Russia was a “threat” to the world, suggesting its actions may inspire other nations to follow suit, in a thinly veiled warning to the parliament he was addressing.

“The distance between our countries is big, it’s thousands of kilometres … but there’s no such thing as distance for the brutality and chaos that Russia brought to the east of Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said.

“Whatever is happening in our region because of the Russian aggression … has become a real threat to your country and your people as well,” he said. “This is the nature of the evil. It can instantly cross any distance, any barriers, destroy lives.”

Read more from Josh Butler and Daniel Hurst on this: Volodymyr Zelenskiy asks Australia to send armoured vehicles to help fight Russia

Related: Volodymyr Zelenskiy asks Australia to send armoured vehicles to help fight Russia

Here are some more of the pictures that have appeared recently on the newswire depicting the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Gen Sir Nick Parker, former commander of land forces in the British army, has somewhat controversially said Nato has been “defeated”, and called for a smaller coalition of nations to develop an offensive counter-strategy to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

PA Media quote him telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

Nato’s bluff was called. We were unable to stop the Russians trampling all over Ukraine and now Nato is holding the line of the 2004 expansion, along the line of the Baltic states and Poland and Hungary and Romania.

And what it has to do is to defend that line, it’s in what in military terms we would call a defensive position.

And I don’t think it has the capacity to move on to the offensive with its 30 nations all with slightly different views.

We need to have a smaller coalition of nations who can start to develop an offensive counter-strategy to Putin.

Moscow would not refuse a meeting between its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, but any talks between them would need to be substantive, RIA news agency has cited the Russian foreign ministry saying.

Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said earlier today that Turkey was working to bring together the Ukrainian and Russian foreign ministers for further talks after hosting peace negotiations in Istanbul this week.

The boss of the British spy agency GCHQ has claimed that demoralised Russian soldiers in Ukraine were refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft. Sir Jeremy Fleming, in a speech given in Australia, said Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, “massively misjudged” his chances for a swift military victory in Ukraine and claimed that his advisers were “afraid to tell him the truth”.

Here are some video clips of his talk:

A new fund-raising effort for LGBTQ+ people fleeing Ukraine because of the war has been launched today by campaigning group All Out.

Matt Beard, executive director at All Out, said: “These funds are supporting LGBT+ Ukrainians with evacuation, shelter, food, water, medication and legal support. This is happening both inside the country and in neighbouring countries like Romania.

“Thousands of people are still being forcibly displaced every day. They all need our immediate and ongoing help. And LGBT+ Ukrainians are feeling particularly vulnerable.”

Transgender people have already experienced difficulties in crossing the border out of Ukraine, due to issues with documentation. The funds raised are helping organisations like Lambda Warszawa, the oldest Polish LGBT+ organisation in Warsaw. Those working at the organisation say: “We’re dealing with people who are facing multiple traumas. They’re fleeing Ukraine, a homo- and transphobic country ravaged by war, and they arrive in Poland, another country that, while peaceful, is similarly anti-LGBT.”

All Out is a global not-for-profit organisation established in 2010.

“Before the invasion of their country, there was some progress towards equality for all. Now the hopes and dreams of an emerging generation of LGBT+ Ukrainians have been cruelly dashed. Instead of increasing safety, dignity and equality, they face the prospect of the kind of brutal homophobia and transphobia increasingly seen in recent years under the Putin regime,” said Beard.

Europe must stop buying oil and gas from Russia and should apply new sanctions over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lithuania’s president, Gitanas Nausėda, said.

Reuters report Nausėda told a joint news conference with the Danish prime minister: “Europe must stop buying Russian gas and oil, because the Kremlin regime uses this money to finance destruction of Ukrainian cities and attacks on peaceful civilians. The fifth sanction package must deliver a maximum blow to the Kremlin regime.”

Earlier, Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, had said she expects more sanctions to be applied, without specifying what they might be.

Here are a selection of the latest pictures to be sent to us over the newswires from Ukraine:

On Sky News, the UK’s international trade secretary was asked about UK-India relations in the wake of India’s refusal to condemn Russian aggression in Ukraine. Anne-Marie Trevelyan said that “we understand why they’ve chosen to sit on the fence at the moment. They have connections in both directions.”

However she went on to say:

But for us, it’s really important to see all countries who believe in democracy and the rule of law and, indeed, defending your own territorial borders and wanting to have that sovereignty, respected, by those around you, to stand up for that.

The UK’s foreign secretary is currently visiting India, in a trip awkwardly timed as it coincides with India also hosting Russia’s foreign minister Sergie Lavrov. Our diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour has more.

Related: Liz Truss’s India visit made awkward by presence of Russian counterpart

In the UK, the government minister that has been put up for interview duties is Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the international secretary for trade. She opened by saying:

The prime minister continues to be very clear that Putin must fail in his outrageous and illegal war in invading Ukraine. And the UK Government continue to work hand in glove with both our US and our EU allies to support Ukraine to defend their territorial country borders, and to make sure that Putin turns his tanks around and takes them home.

On the question of the processing of refugees wanting to come to the UK, Trevelayn said the schemes are “moving at pace”. The UK has so far issued just over 25,000 visas to Ukrainians. Over 4 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their country so far.

Trevelyan was also asked on Sky News about the so-called “golden visa scheme”, where Russian oligarchs had been able to buy themselves residency in the UK by investing at least £2m into the country. Eight people who took advantage of that scheme have subsequently been put on to the list of people sanctioned by the UK government.

Asked whether this showed poor judgement from the government on who it had allowed into the country, Trevelyan entirely side-stepped the question, instead arguing that everybody, including the US and EU, must hold firm on sanctions:

There are some who say, if Putin just demonstrates that he might want to step back, we should all start to unwind these sanctions. Sanctions are there to make it very, very clear that Putin’s war must fail. That Putin’s behaviour is unacceptable. The financial pressures that we are applying with him and to those who support him, who are oligarchs, regardless of where they happen to be living now, cannot sustain their lifestyles. We will not allow that.

Taiwan’s defence ministry has set up a working group to study the tactics of the war in Ukraine, including how the country has been able to hold out against Russia, and has been discussing this with the United States, according to a recent Reuters report.

Taiwan, claimed by China as its own territory, has raised its alert level since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, wary of Beijing possibly making a similar move on the island and the possible impact of the war on China’s military thinking on Taiwan.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of parliament, defence minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said they had had “contact” with foreign countries to talk about how the war was being fought, and had set up their own working group to study it.

Topics Taiwan is following include Russia’s poor military performance and Ukraine’s resistance, he said.

It is not only discussed in exchange meetings between the United States and Taiwan, but also discussed with other countries that have regular contacts with Taiwan.

However, we will not make remarks rashly, but through internal discussions which are important, to get results that are helpful for building armaments and preparing for war.”

A quick snap from Reuters here, that Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen expects more sanctions against Russia. She is visiting Lithuania but declined to say what was being discussed.

• This is Martin Belam here now, taking over from Samantha Lock. I will be here for the next few hours. You can get in touch with me at [email protected]

Some more images to come from Ukraine illustrate the destruction inflicted on the country.

While the Russian rouble re-emerged from the rubble, oil prices tumbled on Thursday on reports that the United States is considering tapping its reserves to combat a supply crisis sparked by the Ukraine war.

Here is a report from Reuters:

Equities struggled to build on the week’s rally after Russia poured cold water on hopes that ceasefire talks were progressing, leaving the prospect of a protracted war in eastern Europe that has already sent shockwaves through the world economy.

WTI tumbled more than 5% and Brent more than 4% as reports said US President Joe Biden was looking at releasing a million barrels a day for several months as he tries to temper a surge in the market to more than $100.

Concerns about demand in China owing to a lockdown in Shanghai was adding to downward pressure.

The White House this month put an embargo on oil from Russia as part of a series of wide-ranging sanctions against the country for its invasion.

However, that sent prices soaring further and put added upward pressure on world inflation, which was already at multi-decade highs.

Officials said the president would make a statement Thursday on plans to cut energy costs “and lower gas prices at the pump for American families”.

The news comes as the International Energy Agency urges other countries to further tap their reserves.

The Russian rouble has recovered to its pre-war value despite western sanctions on the country’s exports and financial systems.

The currency was trading at 75.5 to one US dollar on Thursday morning, compared with almost 140 to the dollar at the beginning of March when it crashed with the onest of sanctions. That is actually better than it was on 22 February, two days before the invasion, when it was at 80 per dollar.

Russia has bolstered the currency by raising interest rates to 20% – therefore encouraging investment in the rouble – and imposing capital controls which mean that people cannot swap roubles for other currencies.

The Kremlin’s threat to make European gas importers like Germany pay for their supplies in roubles – thus boosting the currency’s value – has also helped. More help has come from China and India, which have increased the amount of Russian oil they are buying thanks to generous discounts from Moscow.