Ukraine Pleads For Unlimited Aid To Fight Russia's Month-old War

Ukraine on Thursday pressed NATO for unlimited military aid so that its troops could turn from doggedly defending territory to pushing Russian troops out, warning of a "real" threat that Moscow could use chemical weapons as its war entered into a second month.

The vast scale of civilian suffering in the conflict was underscored yet again as the UN said more than half of the country's children have been driven from their homes by the relentless Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities.

Addressing summits in Brussels via videolink from the besieged capital Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia had unleashed phosphorus bombs on Ukraine along with indiscriminate shelling of civilians and warned that "the threat of full-scale use by Russia of chemical weapons on the territory of Ukraine is real."

"A month of heroic resistance. A month of the darkest suffering," he told the leaders including US President Joe Biden, at the first of three Brussels summits to tighten the sanctions screws on Russia.

"To save people and our cities, Ukraine needs military assistance without restrictions," Zelensky said. "In the same way that Russia is using its full arsenal without restrictions against us."

The Group of Seven major industrialised nations warned Russia "against any threat of the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons or related materials."

It also said it would spare no effort to hold President Vladimir Putin and his associates accountable for the war and vowed to add more sanctions to the unprecedented wave already imposed on Russia, all the while assuring that "we hold no grievances against" the Russian people.

On the ground, long-range Russian strikes on the eastern city of Kharkiv killed at least six civilians and wounded more than a dozen, Ukrainian authorities said.

At least four people including two children were killed in strikes elsewhere in the east, Lugansk governor Sergiy Gayday said, accusing Russian forces of using phosphorus bombs in the village of Rubizhne.

Britain's ITV network showed footage of the incendiary weapons -- which cause horrific burns -- dropping in a white haze overnight on the commuter town of Irpin near Kyiv.

"(Russian President) Vladimir Putin has already crossed the red line into barbarism," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in Brussels.

Zelensky wants NATO to help Ukraine go on the offensive with more advanced fighter jets, missile defence systems, tanks, armoured vehicles and anti-ship missiles.

NATO members have supplied a steady stream of weapons including anti-tank rockets to Ukraine's armed forces, which have helped to stall Russia's advance. But these are seen as essentially defensive.

The United States said the allies could add anti-ship missiles to Ukraine's arsenal. It announced an extra $1 billion in humanitarian aid, and offered to take in up to 100,000 refugees.

Ukraine's navy said it had struck a Russian naval transport vessel docked in the Azov Sea near Mariupol.

Putin had made a "big mistake", NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said.

"He has underestimated the strength of the Ukrainian people, the bravery of the Ukrainian people and their armed forces."

Zelensky's appeal came one month to the day after Russian armoured vehicles rolled over the border, igniting a conflict that is feared to have killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians, along with thousands more soldiers on both sides.

More than 10 million Ukrainians have fled their homes, as cities have faced sustained Russian bombardment from land, sea and air.

The month of war has displaced 4.3 million children -- more than half of Ukraine's estimated child population of 7.5 million, according to the UN children's agency Unicef.

"This is a grim milestone that could have lasting consequences for generations to come," Unicef chief Catherine Russell said.

UN figures show that nearly 3.7 million Ukrainians including 1.8 million children have fled abroad, and more are now displaced inside Ukraine after harrowing journeys out of cities like Mariupol.

In the besieged southern port, Zelensky says nearly 100,000 people are trapped without food, water or power and enduring fierce shelling by Russian forces.

There are also reports of Russia forcibly deporting people from the besieged city to Russian territory and stripping them of their Ukrainian documents, with the foreign ministry tweeting on Thursday that 6,000 Ukrainian residents had been moved in a "new phase of terror against Mariupol."

The southern port city is a key, treasured prize for Russia as it would enable a land-bridge between annexed Crimea and Moscow-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov claimed on Thursday that his forces had taken control of the port's city hall.

In Zhytomyr, a garrison town west of Kyiv, a Russian strike flattened the school where Vasiliy Kravchuk's six-year-old son was meant to start at next year.

"Every day it's 20, 30 times we go to the basement (to shelter). It's difficult because my wife is pregnant, I have a little son," sobbed the 37-year-old, who works for a tourism organisation which is now bereft of tourists.

Experts say Russia's once-vaunted military has been bogged down by dogged resistance, logistical problems and low morale, and has turned to long-range bombardment in the hope of breaking Ukrainian resolve.

Heavy exchanges of shelling could be heard from Irpin, and plumes of black smoke rose into the air, an AFP team at the scene said.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Wednesday that nearly all of the suburb was under Ukrainian control while resident Leonid Markevych, 55, told AFP after felling that "the houses are destroyed, there are only basements left."

The two sides exchanged prisoners for the first time, trading 10 soldiers each, Vice Prime Minister Iryna Vershchuk wrote on Facebook.

Coinciding with the back-to-back Brussels summits, the United States and Britain announced further sanctions against Russian individuals and entities.

But while the Moscow Stock Exchange partially reopened for the first time since the invasion, the G7 summit in Brussels vowed new action to destabilise Russia's tottering economy.

The group of advanced economies and the EU pledged to block transactions involving the Russian central bank's gold reserves, to hamper any Moscow bid to circumvent Western sanctions, the White House said.

Russia's isolation on the world stage was underscored by a second non-binding UN General Assembly resolution demanding an immediate halt to the war, which was approved by 140 countries, with 38 abstaining and five voting against.

Ordinary Russians have been feeling the pinch from shortages of goods and the sudden disappearance of Western brands and things like MasterCard and Visa suspending operations.

Putin's regime has introduced draconian censorship laws to prevent independently verified news about what it calls a "special military operation."