Russia Ukraine war: Western nations vow to send more, bett​er arms to Ukraine

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday it was up to the West and Kyiv to resolve a growing global food crisis provoked by the conflict in Ukraine. Russia's offensive in Ukraine and Western sanctions have disrupted deliveries of wheat and other commodities from the two countries, fuelling concerns about the risk of hunger around the world.

Russian forces in a “frenzied push” have seized half of the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk that is key to Moscow’s efforts to quickly complete the capture of the industrial Donbas region, the mayor told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “The city is essentially being destroyed ruthlessly block by block,” Oleksandr Striuk said. He said heavy street fighting continues and artillery bombardments threaten the lives of the estimated 13,000 civilians still sheltering in the ruined city that once was home to more than 100,000.

Two Russian soldiers were sentenced to more than 11 years in jail each on Tuesday after a court in central Ukraine found them guilty of firing artillery at civilian areas. The verdict after the trial in the Poltava region comes one week after another court, in the capital Kyiv, gave a 21-year-old Russian solider a life sentence - the country's first judicial reckoning on Russia's invasion.

Ukrainian forces were still holding out in Sievierodonetsk on Tuesday, resisting Russia's all-out assault to capture a bombed-out wasteland that Moscow has made the principal objective of its invasion in recent days. Both sides said Russian forces now controlled between a third and half of the city. Russia's separatist proxies acknowledged that capturing it was taking longer than hoped, despite one of the biggest ground assaults of the war.

Representatives of a group of nations working together to investigate war crimes in Russia's invasion of Ukraine are meeting in The Hague amid ongoing calls for those responsible for atrocities to be brought to justice. Tuesday's coordination meeting at the European Union's judicial cooperation agency, Eurojust, of members of a Joint Investigation Team and International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan comes as Russian forces continue to pound Ukrainian towns.

Historically skeptical about European Union efforts to deepen cooperation, Danish voters on Wednesday will choose whether to abandon the country's decision three decades ago to opt out of the bloc's common defence policy. The Danish referendum comes as the latest example of European countries seeking closer defence links with allies in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It follows Sweden and Finland's historic bids to join NATO - something to be taken up at a summit next month.