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The United States warned China against providing military or financial help to Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine, as sanctions on Russian political and business leaders mounted and civilians sought to flee intense fighting on the ground, Reuters reported.

Further talks between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators to ease the crisis were expected on Tuesday after discussions on Monday via video ended with no new progress announced.

Thousands have been killed in intense fighting and bombardments since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Russia calls its actions a “special military operation” to “denazify” the country and prevent genocide, a claim the United States and its allies reject as a pretext for an unjustified and illegal attack.

According to US officials, Russia has asked for military and economic support from Beijing, which signalled a willingness to provide aid, Reuters reported.

Moscow denies that, saying it has sufficient resources to fulfil all of its aims. China’s foreign ministry has labelled the reports on assistance as “disinformation”.

“We have communicated very clearly to Beijing that we won’t stand by,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters after US national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Rome. “We will not allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses.”

The seven-hour meeting was “intense” and reflected “the gravity of the moment,” according to a US official, according to Reuters.

‘NO WAR’

In Russia, a rare anti-war protest occurred in a studio during the main news programme on state TV’s Channel One, which is the primary source of news for millions of Russians and closely follows the Kremlin line.

A woman held up a sign in English and Russian that said: “NO WAR. Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They are lying to you here.”

Britain’s defence ministry said Russia could be planning to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine in response to a staged fake attack on Russian troops, without citing evidence. US officials have made similar statements.

Russia has accused Ukraine of planning to use biological weapons. The United Nations on Friday said it had no evidence Kyiv had such a programme.

Moscow on Monday allowed the first convoy to escape besieged Mariupol, home to the worst humanitarian crisis of the conflict, Reuters reported.

“In the first two hours, 160 cars left,” Andrei Rempel, a representative of the Mariupol city council told Reuters.

Local authorities say as many as 2,500 civilians have died so far, a toll that cannot be independently confirmed.

The United Nations says more than 2.8 million people have now left Ukraine since the start of the war, according to Reuters.

Russia and Ukraine kept a fragile diplomatic path open with a new round of talks Monday even as Moscow’s forces pounded away at Kyiv and other cities across the country in a punishing bombardment the Red Cross said has created “nothing short of a nightmare” for civilians, Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, a convoy of 160 civilian cars left the encircled port city of Mariupol along a designated humanitarian route, the city council reported, in a rare glimmer of hope a week and a half into the lethal siege that has pulverized homes and other buildings and left people desperate for food, water, heat and medicine.

The latest negotiations, held via video conference, were the fourth round involving higher-level officials from the two countries and the first in a week. The talks ended without a breakthrough after several hours, with an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying the negotiators took “a technical pause” and planned to meet again Tuesday.

The two sides had expressed some optimism in the past few days. Mykhailo Podolyak, the aide to Zelenskyy, tweeted that the negotiators would discuss “peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees.”

Previous discussions, held in person in Belarus, produced no lasting humanitarian routes or agreements to end the fighting, according to the Associated Press.

In Washington, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that while the Biden administration supports Ukraine’s participation in the talks with Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin would have to show signs of de-escalating in order to demonstrate good faith.

“And what we’re really looking for is evidence of that, and we’re not seeing any evidence at this point that President Putin is doing anything to stop the onslaught or de-escalate,” she said.

Overall, nearly all of the Russian military offensives remained stalled after making little progress over the weekend, according to a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s assessment. Russian troops were still about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the center of Kyiv, the official said.

The official said that Russian forces have launched more than 900 missiles but that Ukraine’s airspace is still contested, with Russia not achieving total air superiority, Associated Press reported.

Overnight, air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns around the country, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, and fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of the capital.

Ukrainian authorities said two people were killed when the Russians struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire. The Antonov factory is Ukraine’s largest aircraft plant and produces many of the world’s biggest cargo planes.

Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-story apartment building in the northern Obolonskyi district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said, according to the Associated Press.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Prince Faisal bin Fahran Al Saud arrived in Kathmandu on a two-day visit on Monday.

Foreign Secretary Bharat Raj Paudyal received him at the airport.

During the visit, the Saudi Foreign Minister is scheduled to pay courtesy call on President Bidya Devi Bhandari and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Narayan Khadka will hold a meeting with his Saudi counterpart tomorrow.

The government of Nepal on Monday thanked the Indian government for its continued support for the development of infrastructure in the country.

Nepal thanked India during the second Project Monitoring Committee (PMC) meeting on the construction of Nepal Bharat Maitri Polytechnic (NBMP) held in Hetaunda of Makwanpur district.

According to a statement, the meeting was co-chaired by Satish Sivan, Joint Secretary (DPA-III Division), Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India and Kamal Prasad Pokhrel, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Government of Nepal.

The meeting reviewed overall implementation and progress of the project and directed the contractor and the consultant of the project for timely completion.

Noting that the COVID pandemic had posed a major challenge to the project’s progress, both sides said that it has now come out of those challenges and is in the final stages of completion.

During the meeting, the Indian side expressed its happiness at the fruitful cooperation with the government of Nepal and the joint efforts made towards strengthening the education infrastructure in Nepal.