The Russian military claimed Sunday to have struck an oil processing plant and fuel depots around the strategic Black Sea port of Odessa.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Russian ships and aircraft fired missiles on Sunday to strike the facilities, which he said were used to provide fuel to Ukrainian troops near Mykolaiv.
Konashenkov also said Russian strikes destroyed ammunition depots in Kostiantynivka and Khresyshche.
Russia's talks with a "hostile" Ukraine have not been easy, but the main thing is that they are continuing, RIA news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Saturday.
"Ukraine is a very difficult country, very difficult for us. In its current state it is hostile towards us," the agency cited him as telling Belarus television.
Russia and Ukraine have held several rounds of negotiations, both in Turkey and by video conference.
"The main thing is that the talks continue, either in Istanbul or somewhere else," said Peskov, adding that the negotiations were "not easy."
Russia would like to continue talks in neighboring Belarus but Kyiv opposed the idea, he said.
Peskov said Moscow had launched the invasion to "save" two eastern regions seized by Russian-backed separatists in 2014 and said he trusted that the Russian language would be restored to its rightful place in the country.
The venue for a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would most likely be Turkey, Interfax Ukraine cited a Ukrainian negotiator as saying on Saturday.
It said David Arakhamia told Ukrainian television that a time and a place for a meeting were not known.
Both sides have described the negotiations in recent days as difficult. The talks are a combination of face-to-face sessions in Turkey and virtual meetings.
Arakhamia said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had called Putin and Zelenskyy on Friday "and seemed to confirm from his side that they are ready to arrange a meeting in the near future."
He added: "Neither the date or place are known but we think it would most likely be in Istanbul or Ankara."
Ukrainian troops moved cautiously to retake territory north of the country's capital on Saturday, using cables to pull the bodies of civilians off streets of one town out of fear that Russian forces may have left them booby-trapped.
Zelenskyy warned that departing Russian troops were creating a "catastrophic" situation for civilians by leaving mines around homes, abandoned equipment and "even the bodies of those killed." His claims could not be independently verified.
Almost 300 people were buried in a mass grave in Bucha, outside Kyiv, its mayor told AFP on Saturday after the Ukrainian army wrested control of the area from Russia.
"In Bucha, we have already buried 280 people in mass graves," mayor Anatoly Fedoruk said, adding the heavily destroyed town's streets are littered with corpses.
"All these people were shot, killed, in the back of the head," Fedoruk said.
He said the victims were men and women, and that he had seen a 14-year-old boy among the dead.
Many of the bodies had white bandages on them "to show that they were unarmed," he said.
The town still had cars in the streets with "entire families killed: children, women, grandmothers, men," he added.
The corpses were still in the streets because sappers had not worked there yet to check for explosives Fedoruk said.
He claimed some of the victims had tried to cross the Buchanka River to Ukrainian-controlled territory and had been killed.
"These are the consequences of the Russian occupation," he said.
Ukraine and its Western allies reported mounting evidence of Russia withdrawing its forces from around Kyiv and building its troop strength in eastern Ukraine.
The visible shift did not mean the country faced a reprieve from more than five weeks of war or that the more than 4 million refugees who have fled Ukraine will return soon. Zelenskyy said he expects departed towns to endure missile and rocket strikes from afar and for the battle in the east to be intense.
In his nightly video address Saturday, the Ukrainian leader said the country's troops were not allowing the Russians to retreat without a fight: "They are shelling them. They are destroying everyone they can."
Russia, Zelenskyy said, has ample forces to put more pressure on Ukraine's east and south.
"What is the goal of the Russian troops? They want to seize the Donbas and the south of Ukraine," he said. "What is our goal? To defend ourselves, our freedom, our land and our people."
Moscow's focus on eastern Ukraine also kept the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol in the crosshairs. The port city on the Sea of Azov is located in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian troops for eight years. Military analysts think Russian President Vladimir Putin is determined to capture the region after his forces failed to secure Kyiv and other major cities.
The International Committee of the Red Cross had hoped to evacuate Mariupol residents Saturday but had not yet reached the city. A day earlier, local authorities said the Red Cross was blocked by Russian forces.
An adviser to Zelenskyy, Oleksiy Arestovych, said in an interview with Russian lawyer and activist Mark Feygin that Russia and Ukraine had reached an agreement to allow 45 buses to drive to Mariupol to evacuate residents "in coming days."
The Mariupol city council said earlier Saturday that 10 empty buses were headed to Berdyansk, a city 84 kilometers (52.2 miles) west of Mariupol, to pick up people who managed to get there on their own. About 2,000 made it out of Mariupol on Friday, some on buses and some in their own vehicles, city officials said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said 765 Mariupol residents on Saturday used private vehicles to reach Zaporizhzhia, a city still under Ukrainian control that has served as the destination for other planned evacuations.
Mariupol has been surrounded by Russian forces for more than a month and suffered some of the war's worst attacks, including on a maternity hospital and a theater that was sheltering civilians. Around 100,000 people are believed to remain in the city, down from a prewar population of 430,000, and they face dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine.
Zelenskyy said a significant number of Russian troops were tied up in Mariupol, giving Ukraine "invaluable time ... that is allowing us to foil the enemy's tactics and weaken its capabilities."
Also on Saturday, the head of Russia's space program said the future of the International Space Station was hanging in the balance after the United States, the European Union, and Canadian space agencies missed a deadline to meet Russian demands for lifting sanctions on Russian enterprises and hardware.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, told reporters that the state agency is preparing a report on the prospects of international cooperation at the station, to be presented to federal authorities "after Roscosmos has completed its analysis."
Rogozin implied on Russian state TV that the Western sanctions, some of which predate Russia's current military operations in Ukraine, could disrupt the operation of Russian spacecraft servicing the ISS with cargo flights. Russia also sends manned missions to the space station.
He stressed that the Western partners need the space station and "cannot manage without Russia, because no one but us can deliver fuel to the station."
The Canadian Space Agency declined to comment. NASA and the European Space Agency did not immediately return emailed requests for comment.
Space is one of the last remaining areas of cooperation between Moscow and Western nations. US-Russian negotiations on the resumption of joint flights to the space station were underway when Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine last month, prompting unprecedented sanctions on Russian state-linked entities.
Pope Francis said Saturday he was considering a possible visit to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and blasted the leader who launched a "savage" war, delivering his most pointed denunciation yet of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
In his remarks in Malta, Francis didn't cite President Vladimir Putin by name, but the reference was clear when he said "some potentate" had unleashed the threat of nuclear war on the world in an "infantile and destructive aggression."
"We had thought that invasions of other countries, savage street fighting and atomic threats were grim memories of a distant past," Francis told Maltese officials on the Mediterranean island nation at the start of a weekend visit.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
