By ADAM SCHRECK and AN­DREA ROSA | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine told res­i­dents of its in­dus­tri­al heart­land to leave while they still can and urged West­ern na­tions to send “weapons, weapons and weapons” Thurs­day af­ter Russ­ian forces with­drew from the shat­tered out­skirts of Kyiv to re­group for an of­fen­sive in the coun­try’s east.

Rus­sia’s six-week-old in­va­sion failed to take Ukraine’s cap­i­tal quick­ly and achieve what West­ern coun­tries say was Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s ini­tial aim of oust­ing the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. Rus­sia’s fo­cus is now on the Don­bas, a most­ly Russ­ian-speak­ing re­gion in east­ern Ukraine.

In Brus­sels, Ukrain­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Dmytro Kule­ba urged NA­TO to pro­vide more weapons and help his war-torn coun­try pre­vent fur­ther al­leged atroc­i­ties. Ukrain­ian au­thor­i­ties are work­ing to iden­ti­fy hun­dreds of bod­ies found in Kyiv’s north­ern out­skirts af­ter Russ­ian troops with­drew and to doc­u­ment ev­i­dence of pos­si­ble war crimes.

“My agen­da is very sim­ple. ... it’s weapons, weapons and weapons,” Kule­ba said as he ar­rived at NA­TO head­quar­ters for talks with the mil­i­tary or­ga­ni­za­tion’s for­eign min­is­ters.

“The more weapons we get and the soon­er they ar­rive in Ukraine, the more hu­man lives will be saved,” he said.

While NA­TO is striv­ing to avoid ac­tions that might draw any of its 30 mem­bers in­to a war with Rus­sia, Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Jens Stoltenberg urged na­tions that be­long to the West­ern al­liance to send Ukraine more weapons, and not just de­fen­sive arms.

West­ern coun­tries have pro­vid­ed Ukraine with portable an­ti-tank and an­ti-air­craft weapons, but they have been re­luc­tant to sup­ply air­craft, tanks or any equip­ment that Ukrain­ian troops would have to be trained to use.

Moscow an­nounced more than a week ago that it planned to con­cen­trate its forces in the east, and they have large­ly with­drawn from Kyiv and the north. Grow­ing num­bers of Putin’s troops, along with mer­ce­nar­ies, have been re­port­ed mov­ing in­to the Don­bas, where Rus­sia-backed sep­a­ratists have fought Ukrain­ian forces for eight years and con­trol some ter­ri­to­ry.

Ukrain­ian Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Iry­na Vereshchuk urged civil­ians to evac­u­ate to safer re­gions be­fore it was too late. She said Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian of­fi­cials agreed to es­tab­lish 10 civil­ian evac­u­a­tion routes Thurs­day.

The change of Rus­sia’s fo­cus brought re­lief to Cherni­hiv, a city near Ukraine’s north­ern bor­der with Be­larus that was en­cir­cled and cut off for weeks,

The de­part­ed troops left be­hind twist­ed build­ings and trau­ma­tized res­i­dents, who clam­bered over rub­ble and passed cars de­stroyed by the fight­ing. Dozens of peo­ple lined up for food, di­a­pers and med­i­cine Thurs­day at a shat­tered school now serv­ing as an aid-dis­tri­b­u­tion point.

The black­board in one class­room was chalked, “Wednes­day the 23rd of Feb­ru­ary - class work.” Rus­sia in­vad­ed Ukraine the next day, be­sieg­ing Cherni­hiv as its troops tried to sweep south to­wards the cap­i­tal.

“At last we can bring food,” said Vik­tiri­ia Veruha, who was dis­trib­ut­ing aid at the school. “We can now bring food, med­i­cine, and we can evac­u­ate peo­ple from Cherni­hiv, which is al­so very im­por­tant.”

Ta­tiana Nesterenko, who left the city and crossed to Me­dy­ka in Poland, joined more than 4.3 mil­lion refugees who have fled Ukraine since the war start­ed.

“We spent 40 days in a base­ment,” she said. ”Our home was de­stroyed by an airstrike. ... Many peo­ple are home­less now, and there were a lot of vic­tims. There was no help, no vol­un­teers for us. We ex­tin­guished the fire by our­selves.”

Britain’s de­fense min­istry said Thurs­day that Rus­sia was tar­get­ing the “line of con­trol” be­tween Ukrain­ian-held and rebel-con­trolled ar­eas in the Don­bas with ar­tillery and airstrikes and hit­ting in­fra­struc­ture tar­gets around Ukraine to wear down the Ukrain­ian de­fense.

Rus­sia’s De­fense Min­istry said it struck fu­el stor­age sites around the cities of Myko­laiv, Za­porozhe, Kharkiv and Chuguev overnight us­ing cruise mis­siles fired from ships in the Black Sea.

A Ukrain­ian naval ves­sel caught fire un­der un­clear cir­cum­stances in the be­sieged port city of Mar­i­upol, satel­lite pho­tos an­a­lyzed Thurs­day by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press show. The im­ages from Plan­et Labs PBC ap­pear to show the Ukrain­ian com­mand ship Don­bas burn­ing at the Sea of Azov port on Wednes­day af­ter­noon as a near­by build­ing al­so burned.

Mar­i­upol has ex­pe­ri­enced some of the war’s great­est de­pri­va­tions. Russ­ian forces are fight­ing street by street to cap­ture the city; do­ing so would al­low Rus­sia to se­cure a land cor­ri­dor to the Crimean Penin­su­la, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Mar­i­upol May­or Vadym Boichenko said more than 5,000 civil­ians have been killed, in­clud­ing 210 chil­dren. British de­fense of­fi­cials es­ti­mate that 160,000 peo­ple re­main trapped in the city, which had a pre­war pop­u­la­tion of 430,000.

Ukrain­ian au­thor­i­ties said the bod­ies of least 410 civil­ians were found in Bucha and oth­er towns around Kyiv, vic­tims of what Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy has por­trayed as a Russ­ian cam­paign of mur­der, rape, dis­mem­ber­ment and tor­ture.

In ar­eas north of the cap­i­tal, Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials gath­ered ev­i­dence of Russ­ian atroc­i­ties amid signs Moscow’s troops killed peo­ple in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly be­fore re­treat­ing. Some vic­tims were ap­par­ent­ly shot at close range or died with their hands bound.

West­ern of­fi­cials warned that sim­i­lar atroc­i­ties were like­ly to have tak­en place in oth­er ar­eas oc­cu­pied by Russ­ian troops. Ze­len­skyy ac­cused Russ­ian forces of re­mov­ing dead bod­ies in an at­tempt to cov­er up war crimes in ar­eas still un­der their con­trol, “afraid that the glob­al anger over what was seen in Bucha would be re­peat­ed.”

“This is on­ly an at­tempt to hide the ev­i­dence and noth­ing more,” he said in a night­time video ad­dress.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court opened an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to pos­si­ble war crimes in Ukraine be­fore the grim dis­cov­er­ies near Kyiv fu­eled more ur­gent calls for the per­pe­tra­tors of civil­ian atroc­i­ties to be brought to jus­tice. Ukrain­ian au­thor­i­ties were trans­fer­ring piles of body bags to a fa­cil­i­ty for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and in­ves­ti­ga­tion,

The Krem­lin in­sists its troops have com­mit­ted no war crimes and al­leged the Ukraini­ans staged im­ages of bru­tal­i­ty com­ing out of Bucha and near­by towns.

The French gov­ern­ment sum­moned Rus­sia’s am­bas­sador over a tweet sug­gest­ing that im­ages of dead civil­ians were pho­ny. The tweet on Thurs­day, which has since been re­moved but reprint­ed by nu­mer­ous French me­dia out­lets, showed a street in Bucha with a de­mol­ished tank and nu­mer­ous jour­nal­ists un­der the cap­tion “film set.”

French For­eign Min­is­ter Jean-Yves Le Dri­an called the tweet “in­de­cent.”

Two for­mer Ger­man gov­ern­ment min­is­ters sub­mit­ted a crim­i­nal com­plaint with fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors, hop­ing to use na­tion­al laws to seek a war crimes probe against Russ­ian of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Putin and Russ­ian mil­i­tary per­son­nel.

Lawyer Niko­laos Gazeas, who com­piled the 140-page crim­i­nal com­plaint, cit­ed a re­port Thurs­day by news week­ly Der Spiegel that said Ger­many’s for­eign in­tel­li­gence agency had in­ter­cept­ed ra­dio mes­sages be­tween Russ­ian sol­diers dis­cussing the killings of civil­ians in Bucha.

Mem­bers of the U.S. House late Wednes­day over­whelm­ing­ly passed leg­is­la­tion call­ing for a fed­er­al gov­ern­ment re­port on ev­i­dence of war crimes com­mit­ted dur­ing the Russ­ian in­va­sion of Ukraine.

In re­ac­tion to the al­leged atroc­i­ties, the U.S. an­nounced sanc­tions against Putin’s two adult daugh­ters and said it is tough­en­ing penal­ties against Russ­ian banks. Britain banned in­vest­ment in Rus­sia and pledged to end its de­pen­dence on Russ­ian coal and oil by the end of the year.

The Eu­ro­pean Union is al­so ex­pect­ed to take ad­di­tion­al puni­tive mea­sures, in­clud­ing an em­bar­go on Russ­ian coal.

Ze­len­skyy said the sanc­tions would not be ef­fec­tive un­less they in­clud­ed a ban on Russ­ian oil im­ports, on which Eu­rope re­lies heav­i­ly.

Since the war start­ed, Rus­sia and Ukraine have held talks, both by video link and in per­son, but have not found com­mon ground to end the fight­ing.

Russ­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Sergey Lavrov on Thurs­day ac­cused Ukraine of back­track­ing on pro­pos­als it had made over Crimea and Ukraine’s mil­i­tary sta­tus. Lavrov ac­cused Wash­ing­ton and its al­lies of push­ing Ukraine to keep fight­ing, but said Rus­sia in­tend­ed to con­tin­ue the talks.

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An­drea Rosa re­port­ed from Cherni­hiv, Ukraine. Olek­san­dr Sta­shevskyi and Cara An­na in Bucha, Ukraine, Yuras Kar­manau in Lviv, Ukraine, and As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists around the world con­tributed to this re­port.