Ukraine is on the brink of a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’, Britain’s ambassador to the UN warned at an emergency meeting of the Security Council.

Dame Barbara Woodward added her voice to those accusing the Kremlin of launching ‘indiscriminate attacks against men, women and children’ and violating international humanitarian law.

She said: ‘As a result of President Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a country of 44 million people is now on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe.

‘Missiles have rained down on Kharkiv, with cluster munitions hitting residential areas and injuring residents. Disruption to supply chains has caused food shortages in Kramatorsk.

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‘The reckless bombing of an oil depot in Vasylkiv, has unleashed toxic fumes in nearby communities.

‘Violence in Kyiv has forced people to seek refuge underground, with many thousands, including the elderly and disabled, unable to evacuate.’

The UK permanent representative to the UN told the Security Council that ‘hundreds of civilians had been killed as a result of the Russian invasion’ and seven million people had been displaced, with the figure ‘rising exponentially’.

UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said on Monday that more than 500,000 people have fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries since the start of Russia’s invasion last week and the numbers keep rising.

He said the UN is planning for up to four million refugees in the coming weeks if the conflict doesn’t end.

‘We know that we are not even scratching the surface to meet the needs of Ukrainians,’ he told an emergency Security Council meeting.

Home Secretary Priti Patel has said the Government is ‘absolutely working on’ the possibility of helping Ukrainian refugees come to the UK.

The Home Secretary, who has come under intense political pressure from MPs across the Commons to do more to allow Ukrainian refugees to reach the UK, insisted she was taking action to open safe routes.

Ms Patel also faced criticism from refugee charities for falling short of the package of measures put forward by all 27 EU member countries.

Long lines of cars and buses were backed up at checkpoints at the borders of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and non-EU member Moldova.

Others crossed the borders on foot, dragging their possessions behind them.

At Medyka, Poland’s busiest border crossing, officials loaded new arrivals into tour buses before ferrying them to a reception centre in the nearby town of Przemysl where friends, relatives and volunteers waited.

New arrivals huddled in blankets around fires as they waited in the snowy, cold weather to leave the reception centre.

One Ukrainian woman said: ‘I took a train from Kyiv to Lviv to a point where the taxi put us. I walked the last 50 kilometres.’

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Meanwhile, Ukraine’s representative, Sergiy Kyslytsya, told the Security Council that Kyiv was ‘sitting within Russian crosshairs right now’ and that 352 people, including 16 children, had been killed as of Monday in the fighting.

He accused Moscow troops of attacking hospitals and ambulances in a determination to ‘kill civilians’, adding: ‘There is no debate. These are war crimes.’

President Volodymyr Zelensky echoed Mr Kyslytsya’s statements in a late-night address on Monday.

In a video posted to social media, the leader said that in five days Russian forces had launched 56 missile strikes and 113 cruise missiles in Ukraine.

He added: ‘Today, Russian forces brutally fired on Kharkiv from jet artillery. It was clearly a war crime. Kharkiv is a peaceful city, there are peaceful residential areas, no military facilities.

‘Dozens of eyewitness accounts prove that this is not a single false volley, but deliberate destruction of people: the Russians knew where they were shooting.’

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Mr Zelensky went on: ‘There will definitely be an international tribunal for this crime — it’s a violation of all conventions.

‘No one in the world will forgive you for killing peaceful Ukrainian people.’

Vasily Nebenzya, the Russian UN permanent representative, said his country’s armed forces did ‘not have the goal of occupying Ukraine or harming the local population’.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said he plans to open an investigation ‘as rapidly as possible’ into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine.

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