The overview: Day 17 of the war in Ukraine

The population of towns and villages in Ukraine came under renewed fire from the Russian army on Saturday.

Fighting was mainly reported from the south, but also in the east and from around the capital Kyiv.

On the 17th day of the war, the Russian Ministry of Defense spoke of attacks on a “broad front”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that the attackers suffered heavy casualties and the "biggest blow to the Russian army in decades".

In the meantime, 12,000 Russian soldiers have been killed.

He gave the losses in his own ranks since the beginning of the war as around 1,300 soldiers.

The figures cannot be independently verified.

Zelenskyy on Saturday suggested Jerusalem as a possible location for negotiations on an end to the war with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Both Selenskyj and Putin had recently repeatedly telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who was also with the Kremlin chief in Moscow a week ago.

There were no signs of relief for the approximately 400,000 residents of the besieged port city of Mariupol in the south-east.

There, pro-Russian separatists with the support of Russian troops advanced into the eastern outskirts, according to the Ukrainian armed forces.

The Russian Ministry of Defense had previously reported that several parts of the city had been taken.

Mariupol has been under siege for days.

The humanitarian situation there is dramatic. Tens of thousands of people lack food, water and medicine.

A convoy with relief supplies and buses to evacuate the city has set off again, said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Wereschuk.

It was initially unclear whether the fifth attempt at an escape corridor would succeed.

Both sides blamed each other for the aid not arriving.

Attackers lurk between civilian buildings

From the south, the governor of the Mykolayiv region, Vitaly Kim, wrote: "The occupiers shelled hospitals and boarding schools at night with indiscriminate, chaotic fire." The attackers changed their tactics and hid in villages between civilian buildings.

Mykolaiv is located at the mouth of the Southern Bug into the Black Sea.

Should Russian troops capture or bypass the city, they would be able to travel overland to Odessa.

According to Ukrainian sources, about half of the embattled small town of Izyum on the border with the Donetsk region in the east of the beleaguered country is already under Russian control.

The attacking troops had entrenched themselves in the northern part of the city.

Independent confirmation of this was not possible.

According to Kiev sources, Russian troops tried to launch an offensive around the captured city of Volnowakha in the Donbass.

There was also heavy fighting around the village of Rubishne in the Luhansk region.

According to Russian information, the attackers also took numerous towns in eastern Ukraine.

According to Ukrainian military information, Russian troops are also trying to blockade the north-east Ukrainian city of Chernihiv from the south-west.

Selenskyj said the city with almost 280,000 inhabitants was without water supply.

Deputy Prime Minister Wereshchuk spoke of planned refugee corridors for several places north-west of Kyiv such as Hostomel, Makariv and Borodyanka.

The Russian army has been established there for days and is still trying to block the capital from the west.

Efforts to evacuate residents also continued in north-eastern Ukraine.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, an air force base in Wassylkiv and the intelligence center of the Ukrainian armed forces in Brovary were destroyed near Kyiv.

Scholz and Macron call for a ceasefire

Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron called on Putin to call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine.

Scholz and Macron also pushed for a diplomatic solution to the conflict, as government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit announced.

Scholz also spoke to Selenskyj on Saturday.

Russia again warned the West against arms deliveries to Ukraine.

Russian armed forces could view convoys with armaments as a military target, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on state television.

According to Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Germany is working with international partners on a kind of airlift for Ukrainian refugees from Moldova.

The aim is to relieve the country and to distribute those who arrive to other countries, said the Green politician after a meeting with her colleague Nicu Popescu in the capital Chisinau.

At the same time, Baerbock announced that the federal government would bring 2,500 Ukrainian refugees from Moldova directly to Germany as a first step.

She agreed this with Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD).

Faeser announced that the admission of the refugees from Moldova would be organized and implemented “quickly and unbureaucratically” in the next few days.

Special trains will be deployed in Poland this weekend to bring refugees from Ukraine to Germany.

Polish Deputy Interior Minister Pawel Szefernaker spoke on Saturday of nine special trains each to Germany, in addition to the eight regular trains that run daily between Poland and Germany.