INTERNATIONAL:  Russian rocket attacks have destroyed a Ukrainian airbase near the town of Vasylkiv in the Kyiv region on Saturday morning, March 12, Interfax Ukraine has quoted the local mayor as saying.

The rocket attacks also hit an ammunition depot, Vasylkiv Mayor Natalia Balasynovych has said.

Fighting raged northwest of Kyiv on Saturday, with the bulk of Russian ground forces 25 kilometres from the centre of the Ukrainian capital, while several other cities were encircled and under heavy shelling, the UK Defence Ministry has said.

Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk has also said she hoped that several humanitarian corridors would open on Saturday for thousands of residents in the bombarded cities, including from the besieged port city of Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia.

Air raid sirens have blared across most Ukrainian cities on Saturday morning urging people to seek shelters, local media has reported, after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the war had reached a "strategic turning point".

Russian forces appeared to be regrouping, possibly for a fresh offensive which could target the capital Kyiv in a few days, Britain's defence ministry said on Friday (March 11). In a Saturday update, it said fighting northwest of the capital continued and the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remained encircled under heavy Russian shelling.