Prime Minister Narendra Modi will speak to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday, official sources said.

PM Modi’s expected talk with Zelensky comes amid India’s all out efforts to evacuate its nationals, mostly students, from the country facing attack from Russia.

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This is the second time PM Modi will speak to Zelensky since the war began.

The prime minister has also spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin after he launched an attack on Ukraine.

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Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday warned that Ukrainian statehood is in jeopardy and likened the West’s sanctions on Russia to “declaring war,” while a promised cease-fire in the besieged port city of Mariupol collapsed amid scenes of terror.

With the Kremlin’s rhetoric growing fiercer and a reprieve from fighting dissolving, Russian troops continued to shell encircled cities and the number of Ukrainians forced from their country grew to 1.4 million.

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By night time Russian forces had intensified their shelling of Mariupol, while dropping powerful bombs on residential areas of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said.

Bereft mothers mourn slain children, wounded soldiers were fitted with tourniquets and doctors worked by the light of their cellphones as bleakness and desperation pervaded. Crowds of men lined up in the capital to join the Ukrainian military.

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The government has ordered men between the ages of 18 and 60 to stay and be available to fight. Some, like Volodymyr Onysko, have volunteered.