Russia, Ukraine agree civilian evacuation corridors as fighting rages

Russia and Ukraine agreed Thursday to create humanitarian corridors for civilians fleeing intensifying fighting as Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow's advance was "going to plan" and to schedule.

The agreement was the only tangible progress from a second round of talks between Moscow and Kyiv, according to an adviser to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, and it was not immediately clear how they would work. A Russian negotiator, nationalist lawmaker Leonid Slutsky, confirmed the initiative and said it would be implemented soon.

Putin again said Russia was rooting out "neo-Nazis", adding during the televised opening of a national security council meeting that he "will never give up on (his) conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people". 

He earlier told French President Emmanuel Macron that Moscow "intends to continue the uncompromising fight against militants of nationalist armed groups", according to a Kremlin account of their call.

Zelensky has called on the West to up its military assistance, after NATO members ruled out enforcing a no-fly zone for fear of igniting a direct war with nuclear-armed Russia.

"If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!" Zelensky told a news conference.

"If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next," he said, adding that direct talks with Putin were "the only way to stop this war".

The EU has offered fighter jets already, and a source in Berlin said the German government was planning to deliver another 2,700 anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine.

At the talks at an undisclosed location on the Belarus-Poland border, both sides shook hands across a table at the outset, the Ukrainian delegates in military attire and the Russians in more formal suits.

A first round of talks on Monday also yielded no breakthrough, and Kyiv says it will not accept any Russian "ultimatums".

The UN has opened a probe into alleged war crimes, as the Russian military bombards cities in Ukraine with shells and missiles, forcing civilians to cower in basements.

Addressing the Putin regime in a video statement, Zelensky said: "You will reimburse us for everything you did against our state, against every Ukrainian, in full." 

Thirty-three people died Thursday when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block, in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, authorities said.