Russia could release a deadly plague on Ukraine more lethal than Covid, warned the former head of the British Army's chemical weapons unit. 

There are fears that the virus could come from one of Ukraine's 4000 labs with scientists ordered to destroy all "high threat" diseases stored in the facilities. 

There's a chance that Russian troops could storm a lab and use it as a base to unleash a bioweapon or "reckless" bombing could cause deadly pathogens to spill out, said Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, former chief of the British Army's chemical weapons unit. 

"We all need to be aware of the biosecurity threat from Russia," he told The Sun. 

"I think people are very concerned because [if] they realise a virus [it] can bring the world to its knees." 

He cautioned that Covid could be spliced with something like ebola, which would create "a massive problem". 

"The Russians could use a Ukrainian lab to release a bioweapon," he said. 

"It would be ideal – they could blame the US and Ukraine for the release of the pathogen. 

"The chance to go into a lab would be gold dust for the Russians. 

"They could use it in their own disinformation campaign – they would use it for propaganda." 

The US government has also voiced concerns that the Russians might try to take control of Ukraine's labs. 

It is working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces. 

Some Ukrainian labs work with diseases such as coronaviruses, tuberculosis, yellow fever, SARS, West Nile, and some strains of influenza. 

Claims Putin is suffering from serious illness 

The Russian president's increasingly erratic behaviour is being attributed to the impact of a brain disorder caused by dementia, Parkinson's disease or roid rage from steroid treatment for cancer, unconfirmed intelligence sources have claimed. 

Senior figures from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, have cited sources close to the Kremlin as blaming Putin's psychological deterioration for the 69-year-old's decision to invade Ukraine. 

"It is only human sources that can offer you the sort of rich picture that we have of Putin's psyche," a security source told The Daily Mail. 

"There has been an identifiable change in his decision-making over the past five years or so. Those around him see a marked change in the cogency and clarity of what he says and how he perceives the world around him.' 

The Russian leader has been seen with a bloated face and neck lately, which can be a side effect of steroid use. 

Back in 2020, the Kremlin denied that the Russian strongman has a mystery illness, possibly Parkinson's disease, after he appeared to shake in a video, labelling the claims as "complete nonsense". 

Putin faces 'coup' as 'discontent' grows 

Key figures in Russia could be plotting Putin's downfall, which could even see the president killed as "discontent" grows, according to a Russian ex-minister. 

Andrei Kozyrev, who was foreign minister from 1990 to 1996, has predicted Putin could face a coup and be ousted with an "armed escort either to the grave or to retirement". 

He said many Russian leaders had been thrown out in the past. 

"Many Russian tsars were killed. Many were dismissed one way or the other," he told the Daily Express. 

"Even in the Soviet Union, there were ways; Stalin was said to have been poisoned, Khrushchev was just escorted out of the Kremlin. 

"With Putin, I very much expect there to be resistance growing and discontent growing that will be resolved one way or another. 

"I don't know which way but Russian history is full of unexpected outcomes." 

Russian forces killed seven civilians allegedly trying to escape a village near Kyiv 

Russian forces have reportedly gunned down women and children, killing seven civilians who were allegedly trying to escape a village near Kyiv. 

It comes after the defiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed Russia will only take Kyiv if Vladimir Putin's troops "raze it to the ground" as the Ukrainian capital prepares for a siege. 

Ukraine's intelligence service accused Russia of firing at a convoy of civilian evacuees from the village of Peremoha in the Kyiv region. 

They said in a statement: "After the attack, the occupiers forced the remnants of the column to turn back to Peremoha and are not letting them out of the village. 

People, mostly women and children, try to get onto a train bound for Lviv, at the Kyiv railway station. Photo / AP 

"Russians shot a column of women and children while trying to evacuate from the village of Peremoha in the Kyiv region along an agreed "green" corridor. Seven people died, including one child." 

Putin has shown "no interest" in ending the slaughter in Ukraine as he orders his troops to intensify their drive to topple the capital Kyiv. In what has been described by aid agencies as "medieval", the capital came under a volley of devastating missiles as had other key cities including port city Mariupol has been blockaded for 12 days and was starving out civilians. 

The barrage across the country was less shock and awe and more shock and horror as countless residential areas were struck in various towns and cities; Russian forces have taken east of Mariupol where bodies remain strewn about streets, and a military airfield south of the city in Vasylkiv has been hit by missiles. 

The great fear Russian forces would do what they did in Syria and Chechnya and level whole cities is now happening, air raid sirens ringing out across most of Ukraine. 

In a move that could engulf Europe in the conflict, Russia also overnight warned Western supplies being delivered to Ukraine by land and air could now be considered a "legitimate target" in the war. 

Russia plans to take full control of nuclear plant 

Ukraine has chillingly told the UN's nuclear watchdog that Russia is planning to take "full and permanent control" of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant – the largest of its kind in Europe – although Russia has denied the allegation. 

Russian troops seized control of the nuclear plant last week, with the attack starting a large fire near one of its six reactors, which drew condemnation from world leaders. 

In a letter to the nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ukraine said that 400 Russian soldiers were "being present full time on site" and it remained under the control of Russian military forces' commander. 

This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows a close view of Chernobyl nuclear facilities, Ukraine, during the Russian invasion. Photo / AP 

More than 500km away at the Chernobyl nuclear site, repairs were still ongoing to its electrical system after it was damaged in a Russian attack on March 9. 

The plant is now dependent on external diesel generators to keep its reactors operating, said the IAEA, and Chernobyl's 211 personnel and guards have been forced to live there since the day before Russian troops took control. 

The watchdog has stressed the "urgent need" for staff to be able to leave so they can "properly rest and rotate", noting this is a "vital element for safe and secure nuclear power operation". 

"Adding to the difficult situation, communications between the plant and the regulator were lost on 10 March," it warned, although off-site management is still providing information. 

Russia strikes near Ukraine's capital; port city under siege 

Russian forces pounding the port city of Mariupol shelled a mosque that was sheltering more than 80 people, including children, the Ukrainian government said yesterday. Fighting also raged in the outskirts of Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, and Russia kept up its bombardment of other resisting cities. 

Mariupol, a city of 446,000 people, has endured some of Ukraine's worst misery since Russia invaded. Unceasing barrages have thwarted repeated attempts to bring food, water and medicine into the city and evacuate its trapped civilians. It has even interrupted the city's efforts to hurriedly bury its dead in mass graves. 

The Ukrainian government said yesterday that the Sultan Suleiman Mosque was hit, but an unverified Instagram post by a man claiming to be the mosque association's president said the building was spared when a bomb fell about 700 metres away. About 80 residents, including children, were reportedly hiding inside. 

"They are bombing it (Mariupol) 24 hours a day, launching missiles. It is hatred. They kill children," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a video address. 

A group of hospital workers came under sniper fire on Friday. A worker shot in the hip survived, but conditions in the hospital were deteriorating: electricity was reserved for operating tables, and people with nowhere else to go lined the hallways. 

Among them was Anastasiya Erashova, who wept and trembled as she held a sleeping child. The shelling had just killed her other child as well as her brother's child, Erashova said, her scalp crusted with blood. 

"We came to my brother's (place), all of us together. The women and children went underground, and then some mortar struck that building," she said. "We were trapped underground, and two children died. No one was able to save them." 

Meanwhile, French and German leaders spoke yesterday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a failed attempt to reach a ceasefire. According to the Kremlin, Putin laid out terms for ending the war, including Ukraine's demilitarisation and its ceding of territory, among other demands. 

Refugees fleeing the war in neighbouring Ukraine sit in the waiting room of the Suceava railway station in Romania. Photo / AP 

Ukraine's military said Russian forces captured Mariupol's eastern outskirts, tightening the armed squeeze on the strategic port. Taking Mariupol and other ports on the Azov Sea could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014. 

Zelenskyy encouraged his people to keep up their resistance, which many analysts say has prevented the rapid offensive and military victory that the Kremlin likely expected. 

"The fact that all the Ukrainian people resist these invaders has already gone down in history, but we do not have the right to let up our defence, no matter how difficult it may be for us," he said. Later yesterday Zelenskyy reported that 1300 Ukrainian soldiers have died in fighting since the start of the Russian invasion. 

Zelenskyy again deplored Nato's refusal to declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine and said Ukraine has sought ways to procure air defence assets, though he didn't elaborate on this. 

Zelenskyy also accused Russia of employing "a new stage of terror" with the alleged kidnapping of the mayor of Melitopol, a city 192km west of Mariupol. After residents of the occupied city demonstrated for the mayor's release, the Ukrainian leader called on Russian forces to heed the calls. 

"Please hear in Moscow!" Zelenskyy said. "Another protest against Russian troops, against attempts to bring the city to its knees." 

In multiple areas around the capital, artillery barrages sent residents scurrying for shelter as air raid sirens wailed. Britain's Defence Ministry said Russian ground forces that had been massed north of Kyiv for most of the war had edged to within 25 kilometres of the city centre and spread out, likely to support an attempted encirclement. 

As artillery pounded Kyiv's northwestern outskirts, columns of smoke rose southwest of the capital after a strike on an ammunition depot in the town of Vasylkiv caused hundreds of small explosions. A frozen food warehouse just outside the capital also was struck in an apparent effort to target Kyiv's food supply. 

Russian's army tanks move down a street on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine. Photo / AP 

Ukraine's military and volunteer forces have been preparing for an all-out assault. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said about two million people, half the metropolitan area's inhabitants, had left and that "every street, every house … is being fortified." 

Zelenskyy said Russia would need to carpet-bomb the Ukrainian capital and kill its residents to take the city. 

"They will come here only if they kill us all," he said. "If that is their goal, let them come." 

Putin held a 90-minute call with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz yesterday. Putin spoke about "issues related to agreements under discussion to implement the Russian demands" for ending the war, the Kremlin said without providing details. 

For ending hostilities, Moscow has demanded that Ukraine drop its bid to join Nato and adopt a neutral status; acknowledge Russian sovereignty over Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014; recognise the independence of separatist regions in the country's east; and agree to demilitarise. 

Zelenskyy told Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that he would be open to meeting Putin in Jerusalem to discuss an end to the war, but that there would first have to be a ceasefire. Bennett recently met Putin in Moscow with Putin. 

Russia's slow tightening of a noose around Kyiv and the bombardment of other cities mirror tactics that Russian forces have previously used in other campaigns, notably in Syria and Chechnya, to crush armed resistance. 

The Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey said 86 Turkish nationals, including 34 children, were among the people who had sought safety in Mariupol's mosque of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Roksolana, which was modelled on one of the most famous and largest mosques in Istanbul. 

Before Mariupol became a target of the biggest land conflict in Europe since World War II, the city promoted the white-walled building and its towering minaret as a scenic attraction. The death toll in Mariupol passed 1500 on Friday, from 12 days of the attack, the mayor's office said. 

With Mariupol's electricity, gas and water supplies knocked out, aid workers and Ukrainian authorities described an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. Aid group Doctors Without Borders said Mariupol residents are dying from a lack of medication and are draining heating pipes for drinking water. 

A Ukrainian serviceman guards his position in Mariupol, Ukraine. Photo / AP 

Russian forces have hit at least two dozen hospitals and medical facilities since invading, according to the World Health Organisation. Ukrainian officials reported that heavy artillery damaged a cancer hospital and several residential buildings in Mykolaiv, a city 489 kilometres west of Mariupol. 

The hospital's head doctor, Maksim Beznosenko, said several hundred patients were in the facility during the attack, but no one was killed. 

The Russian invaders appear to have struggled far more than expected against determined Ukrainian fighters. Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's Interior Ministry, said a Russian general was killed in fighting for Mariupol. Maj. Gen. Andrei Kolesnikov would be the third Russian general reported killed in action since the war started. 

Kolesnikov's death was not confirmed by the Russian military, which has kept a lid on information about its losses. 

Still, Russia's stronger military threatens to grind down Ukrainian forces, despite an ongoing flow of weapons and other assistance from the West for Ukraine's westward-looking, democratically elected government. 

A senior Russian diplomat warned that Moscow could attack foreign shipments of military equipment to Ukraine. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow has warned the US "that pumping weapons from a number of countries it orchestrates isn't just a dangerous move – it's an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets." 

Russia's troops are likely to be bolstered soon from abroad. Denis Pushilin, the Russia-backed head of a separatist region in eastern Ukraine, said he expects "many thousands" of fighters from the Middle East to join the rebels and fight "shoulder-to-shoulder" against the Ukrainian army. 

Thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been killed, along with many civilians. At least 2.5 million people have fled the country, according to the United Nations refugee agency. 

The Ukrainian chief prosecutor's office said at least 79 children have been killed and nearly 100 have been wounded. Most of the victims were in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Sumy, Kherson and Zhytomyr regions, the office said, noting that the numbers aren't final because active fighting continues.