Russia-Ukraine updates: Putin says 'certain positive movements' in negotiations

Russian forces continue to intensely bombard the key Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, according to local councillor Petro Andrushenko.

Speaking to ABC News by telephone from a bomb shelter in Mariupol on Thursday, Andrushenko said Russian forces have been striking the southern city with missiles and heavy artillery non-stop for more than 24 hours. He said the firing was continuing even as he spoke, hitting the city center.

Mariupol is now besieged and surrounded by Russian troops. A last column of journalists and diplomats managed to pull out on Wednesday under the guns of advancing Russian forces.

Andrushenko said one neighborhood, Livoberezhna, has been "destroyed" and that authorities have tried to evacuate the residents there. The entire city is without power and has waning supplies, according to Andrushenko.

"We haven't any heat, we haven't any water, we haven't any electricity, but we have Russian rockets," he told ABC News.

At least 10 people have been killed and 150 others have been injured in Mariupol so far, according to Andrushenko. But it's virtually impossible to get an accurate count because authorities are unable to recover bodies under such heavy bombardment.

Andrushenko said he believes Russia is trying to make Mariupol "like Aleppo," the Syrian city that the Russian military helped Syrian government forces devastate during a siege there in 2016. Aleppo ultimately became a symbol of the brutality of the Syrian civil war.

“They want to do like Aleppo for Mariupol now," Andrushenko said, "because Mariupol is a symbol of Ukrainian power."

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell

More than 1 million people have been forced to flee Ukraine since Russian forces invaded on Feb. 24, according to the latest figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Over 50% of the refugees from Ukraine are in neighboring Poland, UNHCR figures show.

"In just seven days, 1 million people have fled Ukraine, uprooted by this senseless war," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement Thursday. "I have worked in refugee emergencies for almost 40 years and rarely have I seen an exodus as rapid as this one."

"Hour by hour, minute by minute, more people are fleeing the terrifying reality of violence. Countless have been displaced inside the country," he added. "Peace is the only way to halt this tragedy."

-ABC News' Zoe Magee

A second round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators will be held at the previously planned venue in neighboring Belarus on Thursday at around 3 p.m. local time (7 a.m. ET), according to Vladimir Medinsky, head of the Russian delegation and aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"The talks will take place -- we are now in contact with the Ukrainian side -- at the same venue where they were planned, on the territory of the Brest region of Belarus," Medinsky told reporters Thursday, adding that Russian negotiators are "waiting calmly."

"I think the talks will begin at 3 p.m.," he said.

Ukraine's presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak from the Ukrainian delegation later posted a photo of himself on his official Twitter account on Thursday, saying they were en route via helicopter to the talks in Belarus

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell and Tanya Stukalova

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wouldn't comment on civilian deaths from Russia's invasion of Ukraine when pressed during an interview Thursday with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning America."

"I cannot comment," Lavrov said, adding that there are "a great deal" of "conjectures."

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Russian foreign minister talks attacks on Ukraine

George Stephanopoulos presses Sergey Lavrov on the country’s devastating invasion of Ukraine as Russia escalates its attacks on the country.

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