Russia said yesterday it had destroyed a large quantity of Western-supplied weapons in Ukraine, while halting gas supplies to EU and Nato members Poland and Bulgaria in a move Brussels branded attempted blackmail.

With the conflict that has claimed thousands of lives entering its third month, Ukraine conceded Russian forces had pushed deeper into the country's east and captured several villages, as Moscow intensifies a renewed offensive to take control of Donbas.

Russia's defence ministry said its forces had destroyed the "large batch" of weapons and ammunition supplied by the US and European countries using long-range missile strikes on southeastern Ukraine.

They targeted hangers at an aluminium plant near the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia with "high-precision long-range sea-based Kalibr missiles", the ministry said.

Tensions are also rising in a breakaway region of Moldova bordering southwestern Ukraine, where the interior ministry said that shots had been fired at a village housing a Russian arms depot after drones flew over from Ukraine.

The unrecognised region has reported a series of explosions in recent days that it called "terrorist attacks", leading Kyiv to accuse Moscow of seeking to expand the war further into Europe.

Russia's energy giant Gazprom said it had stopped all gas supplies to Poland and highly dependent Bulgaria, after not receiving payment in rubles from the two EU and Nato members.

The 27-member bloc said it was "prepared" for the stoppage and was planning a "coordinated" response, labelling it "another attempt by Russia to blackmail us with gas".

"Europeans can trust that we stand united and in solidarity with the member states impacted," European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Twitter.

The EU chief also warned importers that paying for Russian gas in rubles would breach sanctions, reports AFP.

The Russian foreign ministry said yesterday that it has banned entry to 287 British MPs in response to the UK's sanctions against Russian parliamentarians over the war in Ukraine.

The ministry also said it had traded Trevor Reed, a former US Marine held in a Russian jail, for Russian citizen Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was serving a 20-year sentence in the United States.

US President Joe Biden, in a statement, welcomed Reed's release from detention in Russia.

More than 5.3 million Ukrainians have fled their country since Russia invaded two months ago, the United Nations said yesterday, with more than 52,000 joining their ranks in the past 24 hours.

In total, 5,317,219 people have fled Ukraine as refugees since February 24, according to the latest data from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

The UN World Tourism Organization said that Russia was withdrawing from the UN's tourism body, ahead of a vote to suspend Moscow's membership over its invasion of Ukraine.