Ukraine: What happened today, Tuesday, March 22?

Displaced Ukrainians on a Poland-bound train bid farewell in Lviv, western Ukraine. Picture: AP Photo/Bernat Armangue

The battle for Ukraine’s cities thundered across its suburbs Tuesday, with the Ukrainian military forcing Russian troops out of a strategically important Kyiv neighborhood, while Russian forces took partial control of three northwest suburbs where there’s been fighting for weeks.

A senior US defense official said Tuesday that Russian ground forces were still largely stalled outside the capital city, but Russian ships spent the last 24 hours shelling the already devastated southern port city of Mariupol from offshore.