The Joe Biden administration is holding internal meetings about sending a high-level official to Kyiv after British prime minister Boris Johnson, Polish president Andrzej Duda and the heads of three Baltic nations met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky this week.

Officials told Politico that it was likely that secretary of state Antony Blinken or defence secretary Lloyd Austin would be sent to the war-torn country.

Both president Biden and vice president Kamala Harris had recently travelled to Poland, the frontline Nato ally bordering Ukraine.

Australia on Thursday imposed a new slew of sanctions on 14 Russian state-owned enterprises, including defence-related entities such as truckmaker Kamaz, and shipping companies SEVMASH and United Shipbuilding Corp.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne, in a statement, said that the sanctions will also extend to electronic company Ruselectronics, responsible for the production of around 80 per cent of all Russian electronics components, and Russian Railways.

The United Nations in its new report said that Russia’s war in Ukraine is “supercharging” a crisis in food, energy and finance in poorer countries that were already struggling to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and a lack of access to adequate funding.

“We are now facing a perfect storm that threatens to devastate the economies of many developing countries,” UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said at a news conference.

He added: “As many as 1.7 billion people – one-third of whom are already living in poverty – are now highly exposed to disruptions in food, energy and finance systems that are triggering increases in poverty and hunger”.

The Russian Defence Ministry has said the entire crew of its Moskva missile cruiser has evacuated the ship, following reports earlier it had been struck and badly damaged by Ukrainian forces.

Russia’s state media confirmed the Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea fleet, had been seriously damaged “as a result of detonation of ammunition that occurred as a result of a fire”.

The defence ministry said the cause of the blaze was being investigated.

A Ukrainian official earlier said the Moskva had been hit by two missiles.

Maksym Marchenko, governor of the region around the Black Sea port of Odesa, said in a post on Telegram that two anti-ship missiles had hit the cruiser.

The Moskva, a 12,500 tonne ship has a crew of around 500, is the ship which Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island told “go f**k yourself” in the first day of Russia’s invasion.

As we mentioned earlier, a Jersey court has issued a freezing order on $7bn worth of assets linked to Roman Abramovich.

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Ukraine has reported that Russian troops took 300 people prisoner for a month in a school near Chernihiv.

A photo reportedly shows the list of the people who were killed there.

The Independent has not been able to verify this information.

Ukraine has claimed to have damaged the Russian cruiser “Moskva” with anti-ship missiles.

Maxim Marchenko, the head of Odessa’s regional administration, announced the alleged development.

His claim has yet to be independently verified.

After his visit to Kyiv, Estonian president Alar Karis has this message of support for Ukraine:

China must convince Russia to stop its “heinous war” in Ukraine, the US treasury secretary has said.

If it does not, Beijing faces a loss of standing in the world, according to Janet Yellen.

Addressing the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington on Wednesday, Ms Yellen also took aim at other countries who were “sitting on the fence” about the situation in Ukraine, saying such a position was “shortsighted”.

The US has more sanctions it can bring against Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration has said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday that more financial firms could be targeted because of Russian aggression.