Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed no let-up in his invasion of Ukraine yesterday, even as the warring sides met for ceasefire talks and Zelensky said Ukrainian lines were holding. After the fall of a first major Ukrainian city to Russian forces, Putin appeared in no mood to heed a global clamour for an end to hostilities as the war entered its second week. Russia intends to continue the uncompromising fight against militants of nationalist armed groups," Putin said, according to a Kremlin account of a call with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Russian armoured columns from Crimea pushed deep into the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson on the first day of their invasion yesterday, triggering fighting that left at least 13 civilians dead. Nine Ukrainian soldiers were also killed, the Kherson regional administration said, as the Russian force seized crossing points from Crimea to the mainland and a crossing over the Dnipro river. But Ukraine insisted on the need for humanitarian corridors, to get urgent supplies into cities and trapped civilians out, as negotiators met at an undisclosed location on the Belarus-Poland border.

A first round of talks on Monday yielded no breakthrough, and Kyiv said it will not accept any Russian "ultimatums". Putin, however, said any attempts to slow the talks process would "only lead to additional demands on Kyiv in our negotiating position". For his part, Macron said he feared that "worse is to come" in the conflict and condemned Putin's "lies", according to an aide.

The invasion, now in its eighth day, has created a refugee exodus and turned Russia into a global pariah in the worlds of finance, diplomacy and sports. The UN has opened a probe into alleged war crimes, as the Russian military bombards cities in Ukraine with shells and missiles, reports AFP. In his latest message, Zelensky said yesterday Ukrainian lines were holding.

"We have nothing to lose but our own freedom," he said. Moscow said it has lost 498 troops. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov kept up a verbal barrage, accusing Western politicians of fixating on "nuclear war" after Putin placed his strategic forces on high alert.

While a long military column appears stalled north of Ukraine's capital Kyiv, Russian troops seized Kherson, a Black Sea city of 290,000 people, after a three-day siege that left it short of food and medicine. Russian troops have been advancing elsewhere on the southern front and are besieging the port city of Mariupol east of Kherson, which is without water or electricity in the depths of winter. "They are trying to create a blockade here, just like in Leningrad," Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko said. The war has displaced more than one million people, according to the United Nations.