• Ukraine says Monday talks ‘hard’ after weekend progress
• US to tell China not to help Russia evade sanctions
• Russia, China deny Moscow sought military aid from Beijing

Russian forces let a first column of cars escape Ukraine’s besieged port of Mariupol yesterday but blocked an aid convoy trying to reach the city, Ukraine said, after 10 days of failed attempts to rescue civilians under relentless bombardment.
The southeastern port, totally surrounded by Russian troops since the first week of the invasion, has suffered the worst humanitarian impact of the war, with hundreds of thousands of people sheltering in basements without food, water or shelter.
Local Ukrainian authorities say as many as 2,500 civilians have died so far in the city, a toll that cannot be independently confirmed. Russia denies targetting civilians.
“At one o’clock (1100 GMT) the Russians opened a checkpoint and those who have cars and fuel began to leave Mariupol in the direction of Zaporizhzhia,” Andrei Rempel, a representative of the Mariupol city council who is now in Zaporizhzhia, a Ukrainian-held city further north, told Reuters.
“In the first two hours, 160 cars left. There are probably already many more now. The city continues to be bombed but this road is not being shelled. We don’t know when the first cars can get to Zaporizhzhia as there are still many Russian checkpoints that need to be passed.”
But Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior aide to president Volodymyr Zelenskiy later said Russia had yet again blocked a humanitarian aid convoy trying to reach the city with supplies.
Russian and Ukrainian delegations held a fourth round of talks yesterday — by video link rather than in person in neighbouring Belarus as in the past — but no new progress was announced.
“Communication is being held yet it’s hard,” tweeted Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak, who had earlier created some hope of headway by saying on Sunday that Russia was beginning to talk “constructively”.
The talks had paused for the day but would resume today. Russia “still has a delusion that 19 days of violence against (Ukrainian) peaceful cities is the right strategy”, he said.
Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky posted on social media that Russia was sticking to its key objectives: “We’re aiming to do everything possible for the achievement of the goals set by Vladimir Putin, for Russia’s peaceful future.”
France said yesterday EU member states had agreed on a fourth package of sanctions against Russia.
Details were not officially disclosed, but diplomatic sources said they would include an import ban on Russian steel and iron, an export ban on luxury goods, and a ban on investment in the energy sector. Chelsea soccer team owner Roman Abramovich and 14 others would be added to the EU blacklist.
The United States made a public effort yesterday to put pressure on China not to help Russia avert sanctions.
Moscow and Beijing, which signed a friendship pact three weeks before the invasion, both denied accusations from US officials that Russia has asked China for weapons.
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome yesterday. The State Deparment said Sullivan’s delegation had “raised directly and very clearly” concerns over Chinese support for Russia.
Russian forces have been bearing down on Kyiv from the northeast and northwest, but have made little progress so far towards the capital itself, despite heavy fighting that has reduced suburbs on its outskirts to rubble. In Kyiv itself, an apartment block was hit by a missile overnight, killing at least one person, officials said.
Apartment resident Maksim Korovii said he and his mother had run out to the balcony after a staircase collapsed and the building caught fire. “We managed to put on whatever clothes we had at hand and made our way from balcony to balcony.”
In the south, where Russia has made more progress, residents of Odessa, a polyglot Black Sea port of 1 million people, fear their city could be next. They formed a human chain yesterday, singing patriotic songs as they carried sandbags from the beach.