Hundreds evacuate from Ukraine's Donetsk region

Kyiv said it had started mandatory evacuations from the eastern region of Donetsk bearing the brunt of the Russian offensive, after Zelensky urged the estimated 200,000 remaining residents to leave.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said a train carrying "women, children, elderly people, many people with reduced mobility" arrived in the central city of Kropyvnytskyi on Tuesday morning.

More than 130 people were evacuated from the Donetsk region, governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

Officials have said they want to get residents out of the battered region before the start of winter as gas pipes for heating have been severed.

In the south of the country, the head of Ukraine's Kryviy Rig military administration said Russian shelling had killed two civilians in a minibus trying to leave the Moscow-controlled Kherson region.

Oleksander Vilkul said two other passengers were in serious condition in hospital with burns. 

The mayor of the city of Mykolaiv, the closest to where Ukrainian forces are looking to launch a counter-offensive to retake Kherson, said Russian strikes had damaged a university dormitory. 

He said 403 people had been killed in his region since the invasion, but added that the looming counter-offensive would "result in a decrease of shelling".

Ukraine was bolstered by more supplies of Western arms - particularly long-range artillery - ahead of the push to retake Kherson.