According to Kharkiv officials, Russian missile attacks hit the centre of Ukraine’s second-largest city, including residential areas and the city administration building.

The strike was reported at 8am local time. There have been no reports of injuries or casualties yet.

Meanwhile, a massive Russian military convoy was seen earlier on Tuesday (March 1) – just north of Kyiv, and pushing towards the capital.

Satellite images by US space technology company, Maxar, captured the convoy, which was about 64 kilometres long.

Separately, the implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine for Asia were discussed at a roundtable session organised by ST on Tuesday.

Joining ST foreign editor Bhagyashree Garekar was a panel of eminent experts – ST global affairs correspondent Jonathan Eyal, ST associate editor Ravi Velloor and Professor Kishore Mahbubani. Prof Mahbubani is a veteran diplomat and distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore.

In other headlines, Malaysia has dropped a requirement for inbound travellers to undergo Covid-19 RTK-Ag tests within six days of arrival under three programmes. These include the air and land vaccinated travel lane with Singapore.

Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said on Monday that the new procedure – which starts Thursday – will also apply to travellers entering Malaysia via the Langkawi International Tourism Bubble and One Stop Centre for short-term business visitors, the Bernama news agency reported.

Currently under these three programmes, travellers will have to take a Covid-19 RTK-Ag test on the second, fourth and sixth day after arriving in Malaysia.

Meanwhile, Dream Cruises’ vessel World Dream, one of two ships that began cruises to nowhere pilots here in 2020, will cease operations after it returns to Singapore shores on Wednesday. This comes after the operator said it no longer has the financial capacity to keep it going.