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Exclusive: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has defended the Australian Government's response to crisis events following criticism he acted "too slow" to assist in the face of emergencies.

In an exclusive interview with Nine's Political Editor Chris Uhlmann on Today, Mr Morrison said he did not accept that narrative, but every crisis had its learning curves.

"You look at the bushfires, then COVID-19, and then the floods – there are some who would say if you were across all those sorts of things there's been a familiar pattern – a lack of foresight, acting too slowly when the crisis comes … do you accept any of that as criticism of the way you behave?" Uhlmann asked.

READ MORE: PM addresses why state of emergency wasn't declared in floods

"There is a chorus of commentary that seeks to support that," Mr Morrison said.

"That is often the same chorus that didn't like how the last election went."

The prime minister claimed Australia was quick to move on the JobKeeper program and close its borders to China when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit.

"Was Australia slow to move in calling out the origins of the virus? No," he said.

When asked if he acted "too slow" to provide assistance for flood-hit communities, Mr Morrison said he moved as quickly as possible.

"We moved as quickly as the defence forces and the agencies can," he said.

READ MORE: Aussies dip deep to raise over $25 million for flood victims

"I understand the frustration because in a disaster like I have seen up in Lismore, no response is ever going to be able to meet the overwhelming need."

The first response "always come from the community", Mr Morrison added.

"Then it comes from the SES and then the ADF comes and supports that."

Watch the full interview above

Russian forces pounded the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on Saturday, shelling its downtown as residents hid in its iconic mosque and elsewhere to avoid the explosions.

Fighting also raged in the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv, as Russia kept up its bombardment of other cities throughout the country.

Mariupol has endured some of Ukraine's worst punishment since Russia invaded. Unceasing barrages have thwarted repeated attempts to bring food, water and medicine into the city of 430,000 and to evacuate its trapped civilians.

READ MORE: Amid Mariupol horror, a newborn rests in her mother's arms

More than 1500 people have died in Mariupol during the siege, according the mayor's office, and the shelling has even interrupted efforts to bury the dead in mass graves.

The Ukrainian government said Saturday that the Sultan Suleiman Mosque was hit, but an unverified Instagram post by a man claiming to be the mosque association's president said the building was spared when a bomb fell about 700 metres away.

About 80 residents, including children, were reportedly hiding inside.

A Ukrainian official said Russian soldiers pillaged a humanitarian convoy that was trying to reach Mariupol and blocked another.

And Ukraine's military said Russian forces captured Mariupol's eastern outskirts, tightening their siege of the strategic port.

Taking Mariupol and other ports on the Azov Sea could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

"They are bombing it (Mariupol) 24 hours a day, launching missiles. It is hatred. They kill children," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a video address.

READ MORE: Russia widens social media crackdown by blocking Instagram

An Associated Press journalist witnessed tanks firing on a nine-story apartment building in the city and was with a group of hospital workers who came under sniper fire on Friday.

A worker shot in the hip survived, but conditions in the hospital were deteriorating: electricity was reserved for operating tables, and people with nowhere else to go lined the hallways.

READ MORE: US bans import of Russian vodka, seafood and diamonds

Among them was Anastasiya Erashova, who wept and trembled as she held a sleeping child. Shelling had just killed her other child as well as her brother's child, Erashova said, her scalp crusted with blood.

"We came to my brother's (place), all of us together. The women and children went underground, and then some mortar struck that building," she said. "We were trapped underground, and two children died. No one was able to save them."

Ukraine's military said Saturday that Russian forces captured Mariupol's eastern outskirts, tightening the armed squeeze on the strategic port. Taking Mariupol and other ports on the Azov Sea could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy encouraged his people to keep up their resistance, which many analysts said has prevented the rapid offensive and military victory the Kremlin likely expected while planning to invade Russia's ex-Soviet neighbour.

"The fact that the whole Ukrainian people resist these invaders has already gone down in history, but we do not have the right to let up our defence, no matter how difficult it may be for us," he said.

Later Saturday, Zelenskyy reported that 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers have died in fighting since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Zelenskyy also accused Russia of employing "a new stage of terror" with the alleged kidnapping the mayor of Melitopol, a city 192 kilometres west of Mariupol. After residents of the occupied city demonstrated for the mayor's release Saturday, the Ukrainian leader called on Russian forces to heed the calls.

"Please hear in Moscow!" Zelenskyy said Saturday. "Another protest against Russian troops, against attempts to bring the city to its knees."

In multiple areas around the capital, artillery barrages sent residents scurrying for shelter and air raid sirens wailed. Britain's Defence Ministry said Russian ground forces massed north of Kyiv for most of the war had edged to within 25 kilometres of the city centre and also spread out, likely to support an attempted encirclement.

As artillery pounded Kyiv's northwestern outskirts, black and white columns of smoke rose southwest of the capital after a strike on an ammunition depot in the town of Vasylkiv caused hundreds of small explosions. A frozen food warehouse just outside the capital also was struck in an apparent effort to target Kyiv's food supply.

Ukraine's military and volunteer forces are preparing for a feared all-out assault. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has said that about 2 million people, half the metropolitan area's inhabitants, have left and that "every street, every house … is being fortified."

Maintaining his forceful portrait of his country, Zelenskyy said Russia would need to carpet-bomb the Ukrainian capital and kill its residents to take the city.

"They will come here only if they kill us all," he said. "If that is their goal, let them come."

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a 90-minute call with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday. Putin spoke about "issues related to agreements under discussion to implement the Russian demands" for ending the war, the Kremlin said without providing details.

The Kremlin said Putin also told Macron and Scholz about video calls between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators over the past few days. The Russian leader also repeated his allegation that Ukrainian forces using civilians as shields had thwarted efforts to evacuate civilians from combat zones.

Russia's slow tightening of a noose around Kyiv and the bombardment of other population centres with artillery and air strikes mirror tactics that Russian forces have previously used in other campaigns, notably in Syria and Chechnya, to crush armed resistance.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey said 86 Turkish nationals, including 34 children, were among the people who had sought safety in Mariupol's mosque of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Roksolana, which was modelled on one of the most famous and largest mosques in Istanbul.

The UN human rights office says at least 579 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, and more than 1,000 have been injured.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said Saturday that 42 of those killed were children, while 54 were injured.

It said most recorded civilian casualties were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a "wide impact area," such as shelling from heavy artillery and missile strikes.

UN officials said they believe the actual number of casualties is considerably higher than so far recorded because the receipt of information has been delayed and many reports still need to be corroborated.

Before Mariupol became a target of the biggest land conflict in Europe since World War II, the city promoted the white-walled building and its towering minaret as a scenic attraction. The death toll in Mariupol passed 1,500 on Friday, from 12 days of attack, the mayor's office said.

With electricity, gas and water supplies knocked out, aid workers and Ukrainian authorities described an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in the surrounded and shelled city. Aid group Doctors Without Borders said residents are dying for lack of medication and draining heating pipes for drinking water.

Russian forces have hit at least two dozen hospitals and medical facilities since they invaded Ukraine on February 24, according to the World Health Organisation. Ukrainian officials reported Saturday that heavy artillery damaged a cancer hospital and several residential buildings in Mykolaiv, a city 489 kilometres west of Mariupol.

The hospital's head doctor, Maksim Beznosenko, said several hundred patients were in the facility during the attack but no one was killed.

Russia's invaders have struggled far more than expected against determined Ukrainian fighters. Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's Interior Ministry, said Saturday that a Russian general was killed in fighting for Mariupol. Maj. Gen. Andrei Kolesnikov would be the third Russian general reported killed in action since the war started.

Kolesnikov's death was not confirmed by the Russian military, which has kept a lid on information about its losses.

Still, Russia's stronger military threatens to grind down the defending forces, despite an ongoing flow of weapons and other assistance from the West for Ukraine's westward-looking, democratically elected government.

A senior Russian diplomat warned that Moscow could target foreign shipments of military equipment to Ukraine. Speaking Saturday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow has warned the United States "that pumping weapons from a number of countries it orchestrates isn't just a dangerous move, it's an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets."

Russia's troops are likely to see their ranks bolstered soon from abroad. Denis Pushilin, the Russia-backed head of a separatist region in eastern Ukraine, said Saturday that he expects "many thousands" of fighters from the Middle East to join the rebels and fight "shoulder-to-shoulder" against the Ukrainian army.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu's said Friday that Russian authorities received requests from over 16,000 people from the Middle East who are eager to join the Russian military action in Ukraine. He added that many of them previously fought together with Russia against the Islamic State group.

Thousands of soldiers on both sides of the war in Ukraine are believed to have been killed along with many civilians. At least 2.5 million people have fled the country, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

The Ukrainian chief prosecutor's office said Saturday at least 79 children have been killed and nearly 100 have been wounded since the start of the war. Most of the victims were in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Sumy, Kherson and Zhytomyr regions, the office said, noting that the numbers aren't final because active fighting continues.

As the conflict drags on, the United Nations is seeking agreement with Ukraine and Russia for establishing aid delivery corridors in Ukraine. Amin Awad, the UN's crisis coordinator for Ukraine, told The Associated Press that progress was being made but he expressed frustration over slow implementation.

Earlier attempts to establish evacuation routes from Mariupol failed under ongoing shelling. Russian forces are also blockading Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city. Ukraine's emergency services reported Saturday that the bodies of five people – two women, a man and two children – were pulled from a Kharkiv apartment building struck by shelling.

On the economic and political front, the US and its allies have moved to further isolate and sanction the Kremlin. President Joe Biden announced that the US will dramatically downgrade its trade status with Russia and ban imports of Russian seafood, alcohol and diamonds.

The move to revoke Russia's "most favoured nation" status was taken in coordination with the European Union and Group of Seven countries.

"The free world is coming together to confront Putin," Biden said.

The fate of a US astronaut remains uncertain after the head of Russia's space agency threatened to abandon him on the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei was scheduled to land in Kazakhstan with two Russian cosmonauts aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on March 30, 2022.

But a February 26 video from Russian space agency director Dmitry Rogozin first called that into question, when he threatened to leave Vande Hei in space and even separate Russian and American parts of the orbiting lab.

READ MORE: Pleas for world to not forget another conflict amid Ukraine invasion

Rogozin was responding to comments from US President Joe Biden, who on February 24 said sanctions against Russia will "degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program," which is known as Roscosmos.

In a March 5 social media post, on Telegram, a state-owned Russian news agency described Rogozin's retort as a joke.

The threats from the staunch Putin ally come alongside a steady stream of social media outbursts since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Rogozin's Telegram and Twitter pages are rife with disinformation and state propaganda, and he has also apparently threatened to send the ISS crashing into the US, Europe, India and China.

READ MORE: Space junk on 9300km/h collision course with the moon

After posting a video of workers removing US and Japanese flags from a Russian rocket, Rogozin even sparked an online spat with former US astronaut Scott Kelly, who replied, "without those flags and the foreign exchange they bring in, your space program won't be worth a damn."

The US has relied heavily on Russia to access the ISS since NASA's last space shuttle took flight in 2011. Since 2020, NASA has also hired private companies like SpaceX to carry astronauts to the ISS, which orbits earth at an average distance of 420 km.

The first pieces of the ISS were launched in 1998. In 2000, an American and two Russians became its first residents. Although divided into US and Russian sections, the ISS was long seen as symbol of scientific partnership between the two geopolitical rivals.

Last year, Russia announced that it would be withdrawing from the ISS in 2025. In January, NASA revealed plans to decommission the ISS in 2031 and send it crashing into the South Pacific Ocean.

Vande Hei arrived at the ISS on April 9, 2021. Next week, he will break Scott Kelly's record for the longest time spent in space by a US astronaut. Including Vande Hei, there are currently seven people aboard the ISS: four Americans, two Russians and a German.

NASA has not responded to Rogozin's remarks and has said that it expects Vande Hei to return to earth aboard the Russian spacecraft as planned, after a 355-day spaceflight. The longest ever spaceflight was completed by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov in 1995 following 437 days aboard the Mir space station.

Citing sanctions, earlier this month Russia cancelled a launch for a British satellite company.​

The devastating floods in NSW and Queensland have left a nation shocked but generous Aussies have responded in the only way they know how – by raising millions of dollars for the victims.

More than 40,000 households were affected and 20 people lost their lives across South-East Queensland and New South Wales. Thousands of families face a desperate struggle to get back on their feet as the floods washed away a lifetime of memories, destroyed homes and wrecked businesses.

Nine, Seven Network and Network Ten united to host the appeal.

FLOODS APPEAL: How to donate

At 12.30am, five hours after the Telethon started, The Australia Unites: Red Cross Flood Appeal had raised over $25 million for flood victims, smashing the $20 million target.

You can continue to donate via the website or QR code below.

Australians have been shocked by the images coming out of Queensland and NSW over the last ten days, with families losing loved ones and homes, helpless residents taking refuge on roofs, vehicles sinking in flood waters and animals scrambling to find shelter.

Aussie businesses stepped up by pledging to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Two of the biggest donations of the night came from mining billionaire Andrew 'Twiggy' Forest, who donated $1 million through the Minderoo Foundation, and John and Linda Van Lieshout, founders of the Super A-Mart furniture store chain.

There was support from the other governments around the country too. The states of WA and Victoria donated $2million, with $1m from South Australia.

A wide range of celebrities donated their time by answering phones at Red Cross Call Centres across the country, where donations were rolling in from thousands of adults and children.

Many celebrities also sent messages of support from across the globe.

But most of the night brought light-hearted entertainment into homes across the country.

Some of the acts included Tones and I, The Wiggles, Baker Boy, The Living End, Kate Miller-Heidke, Casey Chambers, Gang of Youths, Delta Goodrem, Guy Sebastian, Missy Higgins and Hunters & Collectors.

Singers performed from Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, the Brisbane Convention Centre and Nine's studios in Sydney.

The appeal crossed live to Brunswick Heads where former Nine Network CEO David Gyngell, soap opera royalty Delvene Delaney, tennis legend Pat Rafter, surfing champ Mick Fanning and actress Bridie Carter shared their experiences in the Northern Rivers.

Delvene shared with viewers how her grandsons were found floating on a mattress in the middle of the night while Bridie reminded Aussies the clean up is "not a sprint, it is a really long run".

Fanning explained how he was "flying by the seat of his pants" as he launched his own "pretty wild" rescue operation.

You can still donate to the Australia Unites: Red Cross Flood Appeal here, where 100 per cent of funds will go directly to flood victims.

Unprecedented, catastrophic floods have forced their way through parts of Queensland and New South Wales, taking lives and shattering communities along the way.

In an effort to support those impacted by the crisis, Nine, Seven and 10 joined together to raise money for Australian Red Cross.

Donate to the Red Cross

The Australian Red Cross is paramount when it comes to disaster aid, working side by side with organisations such as the St Vincent de Paul Society, The Salvation Army, Lifeline and GIVIT to get help to where it's needed most during times of crisis.

Donations to the telethon will help Red Cross teams provide humanitarian support to people and communities smashed by the floods.

The Red Cross enables volunteers to help with evacuation and relief centres and outreach services, as well as provides support directly to the people and communities impacted, helping them recover and build resilience.

Financial assistance will also be provided to help people and families affected by the unprecedented floods.

Apart from the telethon, Australian Red Cross has already launched a flood appeal.

To donate go to www.redcross.org.au/telethon/ or call 1800 733 276.

Two new 'Watch and Act' alerts have been issued for shires south of the capital city.

It comes after a bushfire that emerged in the Shire of Harvey and sparked emergency warnings, was now 'contained and controlled', according to Emergency WA.

One 'Watch and Act' alert is for the Shire of Collie, 200km south of Perth, while the other is for Shire of Manjimup, 320km south of Perth.

READ MORE: PM says why emergency declared in NSW but not Queensland

Residents around both areas are being told by emergency authorities there "is a possible threat to lives and homes" and "to leave now if the way is clear".

The fire in Manjimup is believed to have started near the intersection of Fly Brook Road and Ritter Road.

While the fire in Collie started in the State Forrest.

The new warnings come hours after people in or near Wellesley Road North and Bernbrooke Place in the Shire of Harvey were warned of a fire closing in after it started early this morning in bushland.

The fire has now been downgraded to an 'Advice' level.

Initially residents were urged to "act immediately to survive. There is a threat to lives and homes," a statement from EmergencyWA read.

Emergency services were warned not to wait and see how the bushfire was approaching, because leaving at the last minute "is deadly".

Those who could not leave were urged to prepare to shelter inside.

"Go to a room in your home away from the fire front and make sure you can easily escape," the warning read.

READ MORE: Australia Unites to raise money for flood-ravaged communities

"Choose a room with two exits and water such as a kitchen or laundry."

Those not at home were warned it was too dangerous to return.

Temperatures in south-western WA have cooled substantially from yesterday's intense highs.

But the weather remains ideal for bushfire conditions, hot with little chance of rain.

Emergency services are attending a serious crash on State Highway 1 at Piarere in Bay of Plenty.The crash near Momona Rd was reported to police at about 8.30pm. Initial indications are the incident involves a single vehicle, with…