Residents defy surrender-or-die demand

KYIV (AP):

The shattered port city of Mariupol appeared on the brink of falling to the Russians on Sunday after seven weeks under siege, in what would give Moscow a crucial success following its failure to storm the Ukrainian capital and the sinking of its Black Sea flagship.

The Russian military estimated that 2,500 Ukrainian fighters were holding out at a hulking steel plant with a warren of underground passageways in the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol.

Moscow set a midday deadline for their surrender, 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 capture of Mariupol would free up Russian forces to join an expected all-out offensive in the coming days for control of the Donbas, the industrial region in the country’s east where the Kremlin has focused its war aims after abandoning, for now at least, any attempt to take Kyiv, the capital.

The relentless bombardment and street fighting in Mariupol have left much of the city pulverised and 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,” Major General Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, 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.

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna 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.

In a reminder that no part of Ukraine is safe, Russian forces carried out missile strikes on Sunday near Kyiv and elsewhere in an apparent effort to weaken Ukraine’s military capacity before the anticipated assault.

BEEF UP

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 on Friday to step up strikes on the capital. The Kremlin said on 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 defense 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.

Malyar, the deputy defense minister, said the Russians continued to hit Mariupol with airstrikes and could be getting ready for an amphibious landing to beef up their ground forces.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 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,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with Ukrainian journalists.

In his nightly address to the nation, Zelenskyy 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”.