Russian President Vladimir Putin said the operation was "going to plan."

In Washington, US President Joe Biden called Putin a "war criminal".

DIPLOMACY

* US national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of Russia's Security Council, in the first high-level contact publicly disclosed between the two countries since the invasion of Ukraine.

* Putin said Russia was ready to discuss Ukraine's neutral status in talks aimed at ending hostilities there, but that Moscow would still achieve the goals of its military operation.

* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged US lawmakers to do more to protect his country from Russia's invasion in an address to the US Congress.

* Biden announced $US800 million ($A1.1 billion) more in security assistance to Ukraine including weapons to take down Russian planes and tanks.

REPORTED ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS

* The US Embassy in Kyiv said Russian forces had shot and killed 10 people waiting in line for bread in the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv. Russia denied any troop presence in the city and said the report was a hoax.

* Ukraine's foreign ministry said Russian forces bombed a theatre in Mariupol where hundreds of civilians were sheltering. A Ukrainian official said Russian forces fired heavy artillery at an evacuation convoy from the city.

* Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the reports. Russia denies targeting civilians.

INSIGHT

* More than three million people have fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries since Russia invaded but the United States has only admitted several hundred Ukrainian refugees. Critics question why the United States hasn't taken more.

ECONOMY

* Putin ordered more infrastructure financing, said structural changes were needed in the economy and promised more support for families and increased social payments as inflation is rising.

* Russia's sanctions-ravaged government is teetering on the brink of its first international debt default since the Bolshevik revolution, with $US117 million ($A162 million) in interest on two dollar-denominated sovereign bonds due Wednesday.

QUOTES

* "The question of principle for our country and its future - the neutral status of Ukraine, its demilitarisation, and its denazification - we were ready and we are ready to discuss as part of negotiations," Putin said in a televised speech.

* "Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people," Zelenskiy told the US Congress.

Australian Associated Press