Europe

ROME, March 5 (Reuters) - Italian police have seized villas and yachts worth at least 140 million euros ($153 million) from four high-profile Russians who were placed on an EU sanctions list following Moscow's attack on Ukraine, sources said on Saturday.

A police source said a villa owned by billionaire businessman Alisher Usmanov on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, and a villa on Lake Como owned by state TV host Vladimir Soloviev, had both been seized.

PRAGUE, March 5 (Reuters) - The situation in Ukraine remains dire and the number of refugees fleeing the Russian invasion couldl potentially rise to 1.5 million by the end of the weekend from a current 1.3 million, the head of the U.N. refugee agency said on Saturday.

"This is the fastest moving refugee crisis we have seen in Europe since the end of World War Two," UNHCR head Filippo Grandi told Reuters in a telephone interview.

PARIS, March 5 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron's lead over rival candidates ahead of next month's election has grown in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to a poll published on Saturday by Le Monde newspaper.

The Sopra Steria poll showed Macron winning 30.5% of votes in the first round of voting on April 10, up from 26.5% a week earlier.

Macron's closest challenger in the first round was Marine Le Pen, of the far-right Rassemblement National party, with 14.5% of votes, compared with 15.5% last week.

March 5 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's attempt to secure direct NATO help in the conflict between their countries was not helping talks between the two sides. 

"Constant angry statements from Mr Zelenskiy do not increase optimism," Lavrov told reporters on Saturday.

In particular, he mentioned Zelenskiy's strong criticism of the Western military alliance on Friday for refusing to intervene in the conflict by preventing Russian missiles and warplanes using Ukrainian airspace.

HELSINKI, March 5 (Reuters) - Sweden and Finland will further strengthen their security cooperation in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the prime ministers of both countries said on Saturday, but they were non-committal on joining NATO.

"Russia's war against a sovereign European nation puts the European security order at risk. In this changing security environment, Finland and Sweden will further strengthen our cooperation," Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin told reporters in Helsinki at a joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.

ZURICH, March 5 (Reuters) - At least 351 civilians are confirmed to have been killed in Ukraine since Russian troops invaded on Feb. 24, and another 707 wounded, although the true numbers are probably "considerably higher", a U.N. monitoring mission said on Saturday.

Most of the civilian casualties were caused by explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems, and from missile and air strikes, monitors from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said.

LVIV/KYIV, Ukraine, March 5 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said Western sanctions were akin to war on Saturday as his forces pressed on with their assault on Ukraine, where planned civilian evacuations from two besieged cities were called off.

Russia and Ukraine traded blame over the failure to provide safe passage to civilians fleeing the two bombarded cities, on the 10th day of a war that has fuelled Europe's biggest humanitarian disaster in decades.

MOSCOW, March 5 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Armed Forces have destroyed 2,037 Ukrainian military infrastructure objects since the start of the operation, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Saturday.

Among them were 71 command posts and communication centers of the Ukrainian armed forces, 98 anti-aircraft missile systems, and 61 radar stations, Konashenkov told a regular briefing.

RZESZOW, Poland (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting eastern Poland near the border with Ukraine as Russia intensifies its war against the former Soviet republic.

Blinken was in the city of Rzeszow on Saturday for talks with top Polish officials and was to go to a frontier post to meet Ukrainian refugees later in the day.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian troops Friday seized the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe after a middle-of-the-night attack that set it on fire and briefly raised worldwide fears of a catastrophe in the most chilling turn yet in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Firefighters put out the blaze, and no radiation was released, U.N. and Ukrainian officials said. Russian forces pressed on with their week-old offensive on multiple fronts, though they did not appear to gain significant ground in fighting Friday. The number of refugees fleeing the country eclipsed 1.2 million.