Key things to know about the Russia-Ukraine conflict

WHAT’S HAPPENING ON THE GROUND IN UKRAINE?

In the northeast, Russian forces were blockading Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, even as efforts have been made to create new humanitarian corridors around it and other urban centers.

Ukraine’s emergency services reported that the bodies of five people were pulled from an apartment building that was struck by shelling in Kharkiv, including two women, a man and two children.

In Kyiv, an ammunition depot outside the city was shelled overnight, sending billowing black smoke into the sky, according to video provided by emergency workers. It was unclear immediately if were injuries or deaths.

New commercial satellite images appeared to capture artillery firing on residential areas that stood between the Russians and the Ukrainian capital. The images from Maxar Technologies showed muzzle flashes and smoke from big guns, as well as impact craters and burning homes in the town of Moschun, 33 kilometers (20.5 miles) from Kyiv, the company said.

WHAT HAS THE AP DIRECTLY WITNESSED OR CONFIRMED?

An Associated Press journalist witnessed tanks firing on a 9-story apartment block in Mariupol and was among a group of medical workers who came under sniper fire on Friday. Conditions at a local hospital there were deteriorating, electricity was reserved for operating tables and the hallways were lined with people with nowhere else to go.

Anastasiya Erashova, wept and trembled as she held a sleeping child. Shelling had just killed her other child as well as her brother’s child. “No one was able to save them.”

The city of 430,000 has been without food, running water and electricity for 10 days.

In Baryshivka, a village east of Kyiv, people surveyed damage and boarded up windows after a Russian bombing reduced a restaurant and a cinema to hanging metal, dust, glass and other debris. Ivan Merzyk, a 62-year-old resident, said: “Putin created this mess, thinking he will be in charge here. Ukrainians are a free nation. We are not going away from here and we don’t want to see any Russian here.”

ARE PEOPLE BEING SAFELY EVACUATED FROM UKRAINE?

Ukrainian authorities said there are plans for several evacuation and humanitarian aid delivery routes. The top priority remains freeing people from the city of Mariupol and getting aid to its desperate population.

Buses were being sent Friday to multiple Kyiv suburbs to bring people to the capital, where authorities say half of the metropolitan area’s population, or around 2 million, has already fled.

There were also efforts to create new humanitarian corridors around the cities of Kherson in the south, Chernihiv in the north and Kharkiv in the east. Russian forces were blockading Kharkiv and pushing their offensive in the south around three cities and towns, including the hometown of Ukraine’s president, Kryvyi Rih.

Warsaw’s mayor has appealed for international help as the city becomes overwhelmed by refugees, with more than a tenth of all those fleeing the war arriving in the Polish capital. It’s train stations have become crowded transit hubs, with many camping out on the floor.

WHAT ARE OTHER COUNTRIES DOING TO STOP THE FIGHTING IN UKRAINE?

The office of French President Emmanuel Macron said he was on a three-way call Saturday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Macron’s office said the call was “very frank and also difficult.”

French officials said Putin gave no indication that he intends to stop the fighting.

Macron said Friday the European Union will continue applying pressure to Moscow and consider all options for more sanctions if Putin intensifies bombing. Among some of the sanctions, the U.S. and its allies are downgrading Russia’s trade status, which would allow for higher tariffs to be imposed on Russian imports.