Ukraine conflict: Joe Biden sends delegates over concerns China is amplifying Russian disinformation

US President Joe Biden is sending his national security adviser to Rome to meet with a Chinese official over worries that Beijing is amplifying Russian disinformation and may help Moscow evade Western economic sanctions.

The White House said US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan would lead a delegation of National Security Council and state department officials in what will be only the third meeting with China’s top foreign policy official Yang Jiechi since the Biden administration took office in January last year.

Sullivan insisted that the US were "communicating directly to Beijing that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them".

He told CNN: "We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world.”

President Joe Biden looks to media as he and and first lady Jill Biden walk across the South Lawn after arriving on Marine One at the White House in Washington, Sunday, March 13, 2022.

China has called assertions by US officials that Russia asked Beijing to provide it with military assistance in Ukraine "disinformation".

A spokesman for the foreign ministry in Beijing, Zhao Lijian, said the US had "been spreading disinformation targeting China on the Ukraine issue, with malicious intentions".

The spokesman insisted China had "played a constructive role in urging peace and calling for negotiations".

While Russia's military is bigger and better equipped than Ukraine's, Russian troops have faced stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered by Western weapons support. With their advance slowed in several areas, they have bombarded several cities with unrelenting shelling, hitting two dozen medical facilities and creating a series of humanitarian crises.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said suffering in Mariupol, where missiles struck a maternity hospital on Wednesday, was "simply immense" and that hundreds of thousands of people faced extreme shortages of food, water and medicine.

"Dead bodies, of civilians and combatants, remain trapped under the rubble or lying in the open where they fell," the Red Cross said in a statement. "Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated."

The UN has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, though it believes the true toll is much higher. The Ukrainian prosecutor general's office said the death toll includes at least 85 children. Millions more people have fled their homes.

Nato said on Sunday it currently does not have any personnel in Ukraine, though the United States has increased the number of US troops deployed to Poland. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the West will respond if Russia's strikes travel outside Ukraine and hit any Nato members, even accidentally.

Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is about 94 miles north of Romania and 155 miles from Hungary, two other Nato allies.

Besieged Ukrainians are holding onto hope that renewed diplomatic talks with Russia might open the way for more civilians to evacuate, a day after Moscow escalated its offensive by shelling areas perilously close to the Polish border.

Diplomats were due to resume talks on Monday, according to Russian state news agency Tass.