Ukraine news – live: Key Putin ally captured as Biden says Russian president ‘a dictator committing genocide’

United States climate envoy John Kerry said that the conflict in Ukraine has indicated that was the time to shift toward clean energy as Vladimir Putin can’t control the “power of the wind or the sun”.

Russia provides Europe with nearly 40 per cent of its gas, complicating western efforts to impose economic sanctions on Mr Putin’s government for its offensive in Ukraine.

“Now is the time to accelerate the transition to an independent and a clean energy future. President Putin cannot control the power of the wind or the sun,” Mr Kerry said in the opening speech to the Our Oceans conference.

A volunteer fighter from the UK who battled Russian forces in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol has been forced to surrender after running out of food and ammunition.

Aiden Aslin, 28, who goes by the name Johnny, said the unit he was with “had no choice” but to lay down their weapons after weeks of heavy fighting and relentless Russian attacks that cut off the city.

He will likely become a prisoner of war, reports Tom Batchelor.

Ukraine has begun reconstruction of seven regions from where Russian troops have partly or completely withdrawn leaving behind a trail of death and destruction, deputy head of the office of president Kyrylo Tymoshenko said.

“In 38 per cent of settlements, the work of local governments and their executive bodies has already started,” he said on Tuesday.

According to him, more than 6,000 settlements are located in Zhytomyr, Zaporizhia, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Chernihiv regions and almost 1,500 of them were under occupation.

Nearly 168 cities and villages have been cleared of mines, he said.

The Joe Biden administration is expected to announce another $750m (£576m) in military assistance for Ukraine as it continues to fight against Russian forces.

The equipment would be funded using the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA)in which the president can authorise the transfer of articles and services from the US without congressional approval, Reuters reported.

The cache of equipment would likely include heavy ground artillery systems, including howitzers.

According to the White House, the US has provided more than $1.7bn (£1.3bn) in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia declared war on 24 February.

Russian president Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said that peace talks with Ukraine have hit a “dead end” and that his bloody war in Ukraine will continue.

“Its goals are absolutely clear and noble,” he said. “It’s clear that we didn’t have a choice. It was the right decision. We have again returned to a dead-end situation for us.”

Shweta Sharma and Alastair Jamieson report.

Statements and assertions published by Russia’s state-controlled media show the atrocities carried out in Ukraine amount to war crimes, says a US expert on Vladimir Putin and his country.

In the weeks before and since Russia invaded Ukraine, Susan Smith-Peter, Professor Of History at the City University of New York, has been monitoring Russian state media and posting translations of some of the pieces she thinks show Moscow’s intention to breach the rules of war.

She says while Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has called for the establishment of a war crimes tribunal similar to the Nuremberg Trials that followed World War II, much of the discussion in the West has focused on the challenge to prove “intent”.

President Joe Biden ratcheted up his rhetoric against Vladimir Putin and accused Russia of committing a “genocide” in Ukraine for the first time on Tuesday.

Mr Biden was speaking in Iowa about the continued effects of inflation, which the White House has pinned as an effect of Mr Putin’s invasion, and declared that American consumers should not pay the price for the actions of “a dictator” declaring war against a sovereign country and its people.

“Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of this should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away,” declared the president.

Following news that Russian oligarch and Mr Putin’s ally Viktor Medvedchuk has been captured by Ukrainians, Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy proposed releasing him to Russia in exchange for Ukrainian soldiers captured by Russian forces.

“I propose to the Russian Federation to exchange this guy of yours” for Ukrainian men and women in Russian captivity, he said in an address which was posted to Telegram.

It has been almost two months since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and millions of people have been forced to flee their homes for safety.

In the UK, several large campaigns have been organised to raise money for those affected and the scheme for sponsoring Ukrainian refugees is under way.

But if you wish to support a friend or family member instead of donating to a large fundraiser, you’ll want to be sure the money gets to them directly, securely and, crucially, as quickly as possible.

The first Ukrainian-born member of US Congress, Victoria Spartz, is calling on the the US state department to send its diplomats back to Kyiv.