Ukraine's president refused Friday to say whether he had ordered an airstrike on Russian soil, as a bus convoy navigated a tortuous evacuation to help thousands flee the besieged city of Mariupol.

Peace talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials resumed via video, but the Kremlin warned the helicopter attack on a fuel depot in the town of Belgorod would hamper negotiations.

Kyiv would not be drawn on whether it was behind the attack, with President Volodymyr Zelensky telling US network Fox News: "I'm sorry, I do not discuss any of my orders as commander in chief."

With the prospect of war expanding across Ukraine's borders, progress appeared stalled in one of the country's most pressing humanitarian disasters, in the shattered southern city of Mariupol.

But late Friday people who managed to flee Mariupol to Russian-occupied Berdiansk were from there carried on dozens of buses to Zaporizhzhia, some 200 kilometers (120 miles) to the northwest, according to an AFP reporter on the scene.

"I am just crying. I just saw my granddaughter," said Olga, who was waiting for relatives at a centre for displaced people in Zaporizhzhia.

"Her mother's family are still in Mariupol and we don't know if they are alive."

The evacuation of 3,071 people, according to figures announced by Zelensky, escaping the ferocious Russian shelling of Mariupol, was a rare success in a city that has faced weeks of bombardment.

At least 5,000 residents have been killed, according to local authorities, and the estimated 160,000 who remain face shortages of food, water and electricity.

The international Red Cross said a team heading to the city to conduct a separate evacuation effort was forced to turn back Friday after "arrangements and conditions made it impossible to proceed".

The Red Cross said its team will try again Saturday.

- Russia regrouping? -

After five weeks of a military campaign that has reduced parts of Ukraine to rubble, Moscow said this week it would scale back attacks on the capital Kyiv and the city of Chernigiv.

But Zelensky said Russia was consolidating and preparing "powerful strikes" in the east and south, joining a chorus of Western assessments that Moscow troops were regrouping, not withdrawing.

On Friday he played host to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola in Kyiv, hailing her "heroism" for visiting the war zone.

"We are glad that you are on the side of the light and the good," Zelensky told Metsola.

"Courage, strength, resolve," Metsola said on Twitter, posting a photograph of her and Zelensky shaking hands.

The airstrike in Russia hit energy giant Rosneft's fuel storage facility in the western town of Belgorod, around 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the border with Ukraine.

Oleksiy Arestovych, an aide to Ukraine's president, said in a Twitter video that "for what's happening on Russia's territory, the responsibility lies with Russia, and it's up to them to deal with."

But the consequence on peace negotiations was swiftly made clear by Moscow.

"This is not something that can be perceived as creating comfortable conditions for the continuation of negotiations," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Russia launched its invasion on February 24, expecting to quickly take Kyiv and topple Zelensky's government.

A ferocious Ukrainian fightback and Russia's logistics and tactical problems scuppered such plans, with Russia also battling unprecedented Western sanctions that have led multinationals to quit the country en masse.

US officials Friday gave a grim assessment of Russia's economy, warning it will tumble into a "deep" recession and shrink by 10 percent.

On the ground, Ukraine's troops were beginning to reassert control including around capital Kyiv and in the southern region of Kherson -- the only significant city that Russia had managed to occupy.

Kyiv has grown impatient over the West's reluctance to step up and provide greater military support to Ukraine, with Washington and other capitals concerned about an escalating conflict with nuclear-armed Russia.

"Just give us missiles. Give us airplanes," Zelensky pleaded on Fox. "You cannot give us F-18 or F-19 or whatever you have? Give us the old Soviet planes. That's all... Give me something to defend my country with."

- 'Common grave' -

Ukraine's defence ministry meanwhile said Russian troops were continuing their "partial retreat" from the north of Kyiv towards the Belarusian border.

Civilians have trickled out of devastated areas as Ukrainian forces liberated areas around Kyiv and Chernigiv.

Three-year-old Karolina Tkachenko and her family had walked an hour through a field strewn with burnt-out Russian armoured vehicles to flee their village outside Kyiv.

"The shops are closed, there's no delivery of supplies. The bridge is also blown up, we can't go for groceries through there," said Karolina's mother Karina Tkachenko.

"I hope all this will end soon, and I will go back to my work," she told AFP.

In Mariupol, Viktoria Dubovytskaya, who had sheltered in the theatre where 300 people are feared to have been killed in Russian bombardments, said she only grasped the extent of the destruction as she fled.

Bodies lay in the rubble, and small wooden crosses were planted in the ground, she told AFP.

"When people find their loved ones, they just bury them wherever they can. Sometimes where roses used to bloom," she said. "The city is now a common grave."

- Radiation risks -

The UN's cultural agency said Friday it has confirmed at least 53 Ukrainian historical sites, religious buildings and museums have sustained damage during the invasion.

Ukraine also warned that Russian forces who left Chernobyl nuclear plant -- site of the world's worst nuclear accident, in 1986 -- after weeks of occupation may have been exposed to radiation.

"Russia behaved irresponsibly in Chernobyl" by digging trenches in contaminated areas and keeping plant personnel from performing their duties, said Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

Ukrainian Paralympian escapes Russian-held city to safety
Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine (AFP) April 1, 2022 - With her wheelchair perched on her lap, Ukrainian world champion powerlifter Raisa Toporkova escaped with friends from the occupied city of Enerhodar where Russian forces were shelling Europe's largest nuclear power facility.

They had lost their homes, but not their sense of humour.

"If the Russians came after us, at least we have our sticks to defend ourselves," joked Yevhenii Razikov, who has cerebral palsy and shared the perilous journey to safety.

Crammed into a car with several others with special needs, Toporkova spent 12 hours negotiating a series of checkpoints to flee the city in southern Ukraine.

"It would be impossible to get out of the car if something happened," Toporkova, who was fifth at last year year's Tokyo Paralympics, told AFP in the regional capital Zaporizhzhia.

"My wheelchair was on me and two of the others need a stick to walk."

More than 10 million Ukrainians have fled their homes since Russia invaded on February 24, but for people with disabilities, the often long and difficult journey can be an almost impossible undertaking.

Russian troops shelled Enerhodar, the site of Europe's largest nuclear power plant, in early March, causing a fire, which was eventually put out.

The attack led to international outrage with memories still fresh of the 1986 explosion at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear reactor, the world's worst nuclear accident.

Toporkova, who has been in a wheelchair for most of her life due to a musculoskeletal growth disorder, said the situation was deteriorating fast in Enerhodar after a month under Russian control.

She was barely able to go out and her first-floor home had no basement to take shelter from the many explosions.

Food supplies were running low and prices had risen by as much as four times. Pharmacies were out of vital prescription medicines.

Another uptick in violence at the nuclear plant could mean a lethal radiation leak.

Worried that the opportunity to leave could close, Toporkova fled on Monday with husband Anton Vavryshchuk, 37, who is also physically disabled.

They were joined by their friends, Razikov and his wife, who did not want to be identified. Both have cerebral palsy.

- Shelling constantly -

"My wheelchair was on our lap and there was shelling constantly. We were scared we would be killed there and the explosions got even louder when we reached the checkpoint," Toporkova said.

After their minibus broke down on the outskirts of the city they were worried their chance was gone, but a Red Cross volunteer managed to transfer them to a car.

Yet at one checkpoint, they were held for seven hours.

It was a long and painful wait for the group, whose physical difficulties were exacerbated by long periods of sitting in a car.

There are more than seven million people aged 60 or older in Ukraine and 2.7 million people with disabilities, according to the European Disability Forum.

Advocacy groups have warned that many would not be able to escape or seek shelter due to lack of mobility.

Out of a column of more than 100 cars, the group said they were eventually one of only two vehicles that were allowed to pass. The journey took 12 hours instead of the usual two because of difficulties at checkpoints.

"There were three possible outcomes: one is that we got hit by the shelling, another is we got stuck and then who could possibly save us. The third is that we got out, and thankfully that's what happened," said Razikov.

- Two-time world champion -

Toporkova started powerlifting 19 years ago and is a two-time world champion.

She has not been able to train since the war began in late February and gyms closed and she also faced losing her job and means to earn a living if she stayed. She used to do three two-hour sessions a week.

"If I don't train for one week, it's OK, but two weeks is terrible," she said. "Let's say I could lift 100 kilograms before, after that time I would only be able to lift 80kg."

"I'm losing results if I'm not training and I won't get invited to international competitions anymore."

Now she is heading to Lviv in western Ukraine and hopes to be able to return to the gym.

"I cannot wait to start training again."

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