Two killed after shell hit a residential building in Kyiv this morning.

Two people were killed and three injured when a shell hit a residential building in north-west Kyiv on Monday morning, Ukraine’s state emergency services has said.

“As of 07:40, the bodies of two people were found in a nine-storey residential building, three people were hospitalised, nine people were treated on the spot,” the agency said in a  just after 8am.

A further 15 people were reportedly rescued from the blaze and 63 evacuated with the fire extinguished just before 8am.

The nine-storey residential apartment building reportedly caught fire from Russian shelling after 5am.

Ukraine’s state emergency service published an update at 7.30am local time, saying they received a report of a fire that broke out shortly after 5am in the Obolonskyi district of the capital.

A fourth round of talks is expected Monday between Ukrainian and Russian officials to discuss getting food, water, medicine and other desperately needed supplies to cities and towns under fire, among other issues, Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said.

The surrounded southern city of Mariupol, where the war has produced some of the greatest human suffering, remains cut off despite earlier talks on creating aid or evacuation convoys.

It will be a “hard discussion,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter. “Although Russia realizes the nonsense of its aggressive actions, it still has a delusion that 19 days of violence against (Ukrainian) peaceful cities is the right strategy.”

The hope for a breakthrough came the day after Russian missiles pounded a military training base in western Ukraine that previously served as a crucial hub for cooperation between Ukraine and NATO.

The attack killed 35 people, Ukrainian officials said, and the base’s proximity to the borders of Poland and other NATO members raised concerns that the Western military alliance could be drawn into the the largest land conflict in Europe since World War II.