Polls open in mainland France at 0600 GMT after an unusual campaign overshadowed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine that analysts warn could lead to unpredictable outcomes with turnout a major factor.

AFP journalists on the scene saw at least 20 bodies of people grouped and lying under plastic sheets next to the station.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was responding to a question about calls by some leaders of G20 countries to exclude Putin from the summit over his decision to send tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.

The premier, Pedro Sanchez, and Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares were given a red carpet reception at Rabat's main airport before heading for discussions with the king followed by iftar -- the evening meal in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The call follows an international outcry after Ukrainian officials said hundreds of civilians were found executed in areas where Russian soldiers have withdrawn around the capital Kyiv.

During a special session of the General Assembly, a resolution demanding the suspension of Russia's membership in the council was approved by majority vote.

Her comments at a US House Financial Services Committee hearing raised questions about the G20's future role in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The democratic world must reject Russian oil and completely block Russian banks from the international finance system, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his daily video address early on Thursday.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Monday slammed Macron's hours of phone calls with Putin, whom he likened to Hitler, and suggested they had achieved nothing.

The new sanctions targeted Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, two adult daughters of Putin's with his former wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva.

A recent report by the activist group Accept-LGBTI Cyprus surveyed around 100 people and revealed the scope of widely discredited practices that claim to be able to change sexual orientation or gender identity still being carried out on the Mediterranean island.

The figure issued by the UN's International Organization for Migration is up from the 6.48 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) estimated in a first study by the IOM on March 16.

Steinmeier, a Social Democrat who served as Foreign Minister under Chancellor Angela Merkel before being elevated to the presidency, said Russia's invasion of Ukraine meant he and others had to reckon honestly with what they had got wrong.

Speaking to German news organization RND, Filip Thon warned that the energy firm was already seeing wholesale retail prices 20 times higher and electricity prices eight times higher this spring than a year ago.

Local authorities said they had been forced to dig communal graves to bury the dead accumulating in the streets, including some found with their hands bound behind their backs, in scenes that sent shockwaves through international capitals more than a month into Russia's invasion.

Addressing a jubilant crowd chanting his name, many of them wearing Fidesz's orange party color, Orban said: "We have won a great victory -- a victory so great you can perhaps see it from the moon and certainly from Brussels".

"Here in this long grave, 57 people are buried," said Serhii Kaplychnyi, who identified himself as head of the rescue services in Bucha and who was organising the recovery of the bodies. 

Like other Western countries, the United States has turned to its own stocks to furnish Ukraine with shoulder-fired Stinger and Javelin missiles, for instance. These weapons from Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon Technologies were paid for some time ago.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold the videoconference with EU leaders Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen, carrying through on an annual exercise that was skipped last year as tensions simmered.

Mathias Mogge, chief executive of the group, which serves 14.3 million people with projects in 35 countries, said it was critical to maintain communication with Russia, one of the world's largest producers of wheat, in tackling the crisis.

The first poll conducted by Levada since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, said 83 percent of Russians approve of Putin's actions, up from 71 percent in early February. 

Macron, who is due to address a rally for the first time in his re-election campaign on Saturday, attended a meeting at the headquarters of his Republic on the Move (LREM) party late Wednesday.

The text, which provides legal cover, says the restrictions can be applied "exceptionally and when there are extraordinary circumstances or force majeure that justify it".

"Based on what we know now, the most likely scenario is that the COVID-19 virus continues to evolve, but the severity of disease it causes reduces over time as immunity increases due to vaccination and infection," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a briefing.

"We have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership," Kate Bedingfield, White House communications director, told a press conference.

The report by the parliament-supervised National Audit Office (NAO) will fuel opposition claims that Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government was wasteful and nepotistic in its allocation of huge contracts during the two-year pandemic.

His critics -- including many in Brussels -- accuse the nationalist strongman of neutering all opposition.

BA.2 now represents nearly 86 percent of all sequenced cases, according to the World Health Organization. It is even more transmissible than its highly contagious Omicron siblings, BA.1 and BA.1.1, however the evidence so far suggests that it is no more likely to cause severe disease.

"In my 40 years as a humanitarian worker, I have never, ever seen three million people displaced by war and conflict every week for a month", Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), told AFP in an interview.

The billionaire businessman, recently slapped with sanctions by Western nations seeking to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine, has reportedly been shuttling between Kyiv, Moscow and other negotiation sites.