Ukraine vows fight 'to the end' as Mariupol defenders defy Russia's surrender-or-die demand
Russia estimates about 2,500 Ukrainian fighters holding out at a steel plant
The shattered port city of Mariupol appeared on the brink of falling to Russian forces Sunday in what would give Moscow its biggest victory of the war yet and free up troops to take part in a potentially climactic battle for control of Ukraine's industrial east.
Russia estimated that about 2,500 Ukrainian fighters holding out at a hulking steel plant with a warren of underground passageways provided the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol, much of which has been reduced to a smoking ruin during a merciless seven-week siege.
Moscow gave the city's defenders a surrender-or-die ultimatum with a midday deadline, saying those who laid down their arms were "guaranteed to keep their lives." But the defenders did not submit, just as they rejected previous ultimatums.
"We will fight absolutely to the end, to the win, in this war," Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal vowed on ABC's This Week. He said Ukraine is prepared to end the war through diplomacy if possible "but we do not have intention to surrender."
The relentless bombardment and street fighting in Mariupol have killed at least 21,000 people, by the Ukrainians' estimate. A maternity hospital was hit by a lethal Russian airstrike in the opening weeks of the war, and about 300 people were reported killed in the bombing of a theatre where civilians were taking shelter.
An estimated 100,000 remained in the city out of a pre-war population of 450,000, trapped without food, water, heat or electricity in a siege that has made Mariupol the scene of some of the worst suffering of the war.
"All those who will continue resistance will be destroyed," Maj.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defence Ministry's spokesperson, said in announcing the latest ultimatum.
He said intercepted communications indicated there were about 400 foreign mercenaries along with the Ukrainian troops at the Azovstal steel mill, a claim that could not be independently verified.
Tunnels at the sprawling Azovstal steel mill, which covers an area of more than 11 square kilometres, have allowed the defenders to hide and resist.
Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said the Russians continued to hit Mariupol with airstrikes and could be getting ready for an amphibious landing to reinforce their ground troops.
'Shield defending Ukraine'
Malyar described Mariupol as a "shield defending Ukraine" as Russian troops prepare for the battle in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists already control some territory.
If Mariupol is captured, Russian forces there are expected to join an all-out offensive in the coming days for control of the Donbas, the eastern industrial region that the Kremlin is bent on taking after failing in its bid to seize Kyiv, Ukraine's capital.
Capturing the city would be Russia's biggest victory after two months of costly fighting and would allow Russia to secure a land corridor from the Donbas to the Crimean Peninsula — which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014 — and deprive Ukraine of a major port and its prized industrial assets.
The looming offensive in the east, if successful, would give Russian President Vladimir Putin a vital piece of the country and a badly needed victory that he could sell to the Russian people amid the war's mounting casualties and the economic hardship caused by the West's sanctions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the fall of Mariupol could scuttle any attempt at a negotiated peace.
"The destruction of all our guys in Mariupol — what they are doing now — can put an end to any format of negotiations," Zelensky said in an interview with Ukrainian journalists.
In his nightly address to the nation, Zelensky called on the West to send more heavy weapons immediately if there is any chance of saving the city, adding Russia is "deliberately trying to destroy everyone who is there."
Russia strikes Kyiv and eastern cities
In a reminder that no part of Ukraine was immune until the war ends, Russian forces carried out new missile strikes Sunday near Kyiv and elsewhere in an apparent effort to weaken Ukraine's military capacity before the anticipated assault in the east, as part of an invasion now in its eighth week.
After the humiliating loss of the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet last week to what the Ukrainians boasted was a missile attack, Russia's military vowed Friday to step up strikes on the capital.
The Kremlin said Sunday that it had attacked an ammunition plant near Kyiv overnight with precision-guided missiles, the third such strike in as many days.
Russia also claimed to have destroyed Ukrainian air defence radar equipment in the east, near Sievierodonetsk, as well as several ammunition depots elsewhere.
Explosions were reported overnight in Kramatorsk, the eastern city where rockets earlier this month killed at least 57 people at a train station crowded with civilians trying to evacuate ahead of the Russian offensive.
A regional official in eastern Ukraine said at least two people were killed when Russian forces fired at residential buildings in the town of Zolote, near the front line in the Donbas.
At least five people were killed by Russian shelling on Sunday in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, regional officials said. The barrage slammed into apartment buildings and left the streets scattered with broken glass and other debris, including part of at least one rocket.
Zelensky said on Sunday that 18 people have been killed and more than 100 have been wounded in the past four days due to shelling in Kharkiv.
Russia also said that its forces shot down two Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter jets in the Kharkiv region and destroyed two Ukrainian command posts and a radar system for S-300 surface-to-air missiles in the city of Avdiivka, north of the city of Donetsk. Ukrainian officials did not immediately confirm the claimed losses.
With files from Reuters