A daily intelligence brief from the United Kingdom’s defence ministry shows that Russian forces have dispersed their military column north of Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv, and are potentially encircling the capital.

That would tighten the attempted siege of the city, which has been under threat for a few weeks since the Russians invaded Ukraine late last month.

The UK says the cities of Kyiv, Mariupol, Sumy, Chernihiv and Kharkiv are largely encircled and are all under heavy Russian shelling.

The group Doctors Without Borders says people in Mariupol are dying due to lack of medication. The city has been without drinking water and medicine for over a week. People there are using ground water, tapping heating pipes and boiling it on wood fires.  People there are digging holes for their neighbours who died in fighting in makeshift graves.

Germany’s foreign minister said that countries further away from Ukraine are working to bring more refugees, with nearby nations struggling under the logistics of adding the new arrivals.

For example, Moldova, a country of 2.5 million, has taken in 100,000 people fleeing fighting in Ukraine. The European Union is setting up a green corridor to bring people by bus through Romania to other EU nations and also working to fly people beyond Europe to North America.

Elsewhere, Italian authorities have seized a superyacht in the port of Trieste named Sy A from Russian coal and fertilizer billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko. The yacht is valued at 530 million Euros, or over $737 million Canadian.