Six countries including UK and US accuse Russia of war crimes in Ukraine

Russia has been accused by the UK, the US, France, Albania, Ireland and Norway of war crimes in Ukraine, as Paris claimed Vladimir Putin was only pretending to be interested in negotiating a peace deal.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said he agreed with Joe Biden that war crimes had been committed in Ukraine, adding that US experts were in the process of documenting and evaluating potential war crimes.

Earlier, Blinken, who has repeatedly warned that Putin will turn to the use of chemical weapons, said the US administration was gathering evidence of war crimes and appeared to dismiss hopes of a resolution through diplomacy.

Rescue workers continued to search through the rubble for survivors of a Russian airstrike on a theatre in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol where hundreds of people had been sheltering.

Officials said more than 20 people were killed and 25 injured in an airstrike on a school and community centre in Merefa, close to the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Speaking via video link to a committee of MEPs, Reznikov, who has been leading the Ukrainian delegation in peace talks with Russia, said the first step to any deal was an immediate ceasefire but he feared the Kremlin would first need to be defeated in battle.

The US president, Joe Biden, is to hold a call on Friday with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. There were seven hours of talks on Monday in Rome between the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi.