Mariupol

Mariupol continues to be bombarded by Russian forces, who also reportedly attacked Odesa for the first time.

Three civilians were killed and five were injured as a result of Russian shelling on Sunday in the east of the country, said Pavel Kirilenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration. He said at least one person was killed. Mariupol continues to be bombarded by Russian forces, who also reportedly attacked Odesa for the first time. Mariupol continues to be bombarded by Russian forces, who also reportedly attacked Odesa for the first time. Meanwhile, Odesa’s mayor has accused Russian forces of carrying out an attack on residential buildings on the outskirts of the Black Sea port city, marking the first such reported attack there. Ukraine has rejected Russian calls to surrender the port city of Mariupol, where residents are besieged with little food, water, and power, in a humanitarian crisis that is increasing pressure on European leaders to toughen sanctions on Moscow.

After weeks of bombarding the city, Russia offered the ultimatum on Sunday: If Mariupol surrenders, it will let civilians leave and humanitarian aid enter.

Ukrainian officials are on the lookout for new fronts possibly opening, and not just in the south, where Russia's military has been seeing more success. The city has been the site of at least two bombings of buildings where civilians were seeking shelter: a school and a theater. Ukrainian officials have so far refused Russia's calls for surrender, with an adviser to the city's mayor even going so far as to use an expletive in a Facebook post rejecting the ultimatum.

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If Russia takes control of Mariupol, it would create a land corridor between the separatist enclaves in the east and Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014. Recently evacuated residents also told The Times that they had been in touch with people who had been taken from basement shelters to Russia against their will. Nadezhda Sukhorukova, a resident who managed to escape Mariupol, described life in the city — including the near-constant roar of planes and explosions, and the corpses heaped on the street —  in a series of Facebook posts.

The most bombarded city in Ukraine's war with Russia is key to Moscow's military campaign.

Ukrainian citizens will "have to speak up and respond to this or that form of compromise", President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says.

"How much more difficult will that be in a massive city like Kyiv? They are clearly stalled, bogged down, all kinds of problems with their logistics and I don't think they are ready yet to declare any kind of a ceasefire negotiation. One woman told her: "We heard a really loud explosion. It is not clear how recent these photographs are or their origin. Hundreds of men, women, and children were thought to have been in the theatre's basement after their homes were destroyed during the invasion - and the word "children" had been displayed in large letters at the site. He has described the siege of Mariupol a war crime and "a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come". Sky correspondent John Sparks travelled with the Ukrainian military to the front line on the outskirts of the city and described the "air filled with the deep-sounding boom of tank and artillery fire".

Ukraine defied Moscow's demand for its soldiers to lay down arms before dawn on Monday in besieged Mariupol where hundreds of thousands of civilians are ...

Both sides hinted last week at progress in talks on a formula which would include some kind of "neutrality" for Ukraine, though details were scarce. Britain said there was heavy fighting to the north but that Ukrainian forces had fought off an advance and most Russian forces were more than 25 km (15 miles) from the city centre. Ukraine said there were no strategic military objects in the area. Russia said the centre was being used as a weapons store. Emergency services combed wreckage to the sound of distant artillery fire. People who came out of basements sat on benches amid the debris, bundled up in coats. A part of Mariupol now held by Russian forces, reached by Reuters on Sunday, was an eerie wasteland. Several bodies lay by the road, wrapped in blankets. "Such statements from the American president, unworthy of a statesman of such high rank, put Russian-American relations on the verge of rupture," it said. There was no immediate reply from the Kremlin to a request for comment from Reuters out of hours on Monday. Russia calls the war, the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two, a "special military operation" to disarm Ukraine and protect it from "Nazis". Europe said Russia was using refugees as a tool and that it was prepared to take more action on top of existing sanctions to isolate Russia from global finances and trade.

Ukrainians won't bow to Russian demands as UK 'would consider Putin war crimes trial'

“They are under the rubble, and we don’t know how many of them have survived,” he said. The US Embassy in Kyiv tweeted: “As heroic rescuers worked to rescue children and others following the horrific bombing of the Mariupol theatre, forces attacked a designated shelter at an art school there with 400 inside. “I am not so optimistic that two or three days or even a week will close the issue. “We have an ultimatum with points in it. But Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said: “Of course we rejected these proposals, as there was little trust that the Russians would stick to their word, having previously attacked evacuation convoys. Thousands of civilians are feared to have been killed in the city where a theatre, believed to have been housing more than 1,000 civilians, and a school sheltering 400 have been hit.

Russia accused of striking residential areas in what would be first attack on Black Sea port.

The mayor of Kharkiv, Igor Terekhov, said hundreds of buildings, many of them residential, had been destroyed in the country’s second largest city. Zelenskiy said on Monday people were “still under the rubble, and we don’t know how many of them have survived”. Russian intelligence said hundreds of mines had drifted into the Black Sea from Ukrainian ports, a claim Ukraine dismissed as disinformation. Mariupol will become part of a list of cities that were completely destroyed by war. Ukraine’s prosecutor general said eight people had died in the bombardment on Sunday night. “Ukraine cannot fulfil that ultimatum.” The country would never accept Russian occupation, he said.

Russia issued an ultimatum offering to open humanitarian corridors in exchange for the surrender of the city.

This is Associated Press video journalist Mstyslav Chernov's account of the siege of Mariupol, as documented with photographer Evgeniy Maloletka.

We are still flooded by messages from people wanting to learn the fate of loved ones we photographed and filmed. As we pulled up to the 16th checkpoint, we heard voices. And the path to our van, with our food, water and equipment, was covered by a Russian sniper who had already struck a medic venturing outside. Our batteries were almost out of juice, and we had no connection to send the images. We found them at a hospital on the front line, some with babies and others in labour. For several days, the only link we had to the outside world was through a satellite phone. Sometimes we would run out to film a burning house and then run back amid the explosions. It was from there that we saw the last shreds of the solid middle-class city of Mariupol come apart. On the way, we started worrying about spare tyres, and found online a man nearby willing to sell to us in the middle of the night. – “As a teenager growing up in Ukraine in the city of Kharkiv, just 20 miles from the Russian border, I learned how to handle a gun as part of the school curriculum. I have since covered wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, trying to show the world the devastation first-hand. We had been documenting the siege of the Ukrainian city by Russian troops for more than two weeks and were the only international journalists left in the city.

After weeks of bombarding the city, Russia offered the ultimatum on Sunday: If Mariupol surrenders, it will let civilians leave and humanitarian aid enter.

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A team of Associated Press journalists were documenting the siege of Mariupol from inside the Ukrainian city when they learned Russian soldiers were ...

This is Associated Press video journalist Mstyslav Chernov's account of the siege of Mariupol, as documented with photographer Evgeniy Maloletka.

We are still flooded by messages from people wanting to learn the fate of loved ones we photographed and filmed. As we pulled up to the 16th checkpoint, we heard voices. And the path to our van, with our food, water and equipment, was covered by a Russian sniper who had already struck a medic venturing outside. Our batteries were almost out of juice, and we had no connection to send the images. We found them at a hospital on the front line, some with babies and others in labour. For several days, the only link we had to the outside world was through a satellite phone. Sometimes we would run out to film a burning house and then run back amid the explosions. It was from there that we saw the last shreds of the solid middle-class city of Mariupol come apart. On the way, we started worrying about spare tyres, and found online a man nearby willing to sell to us in the middle of the night. – “As a teenager growing up in Ukraine in the city of Kharkiv, just 20 miles from the Russian border, I learned how to handle a gun as part of the school curriculum. I have since covered wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, trying to show the world the devastation first-hand. We had been documenting the siege of the Ukrainian city by Russian troops for more than two weeks and were the only international journalists left in the city.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said about 400 people were sheltering in an art school hit by Russian bombs.

Shortly after Russia said that Ukraine had until 5 a.m. Monday to give up Mariupol in exchange for safe passage out of the city, Russian shelling hit an art school where civilians were sheltering, the second strike on a public building in less than a week. The city has been under fire for more than two weeks. "Every minute we have a Russian attack," he said.

As Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin has led devastating sieges of Grozny, Aleppo and now Mariupol.

By the time Russian forces took the city in February 2000, the city was decimated. Putin was born in Leningrad after the siege in 1952, but lost an older brother, Viktor, who died as an infant during the blockade. Survivors of the Aleppo siege recall the trauma not only associated with the bombing and shelling, but also with the severe lack of food and other basic supplies. The United Nations later said Grozny was the most destroyed city on Earth, while estimates of the deaths ran well into the thousands. Chechnya had fought off a Russian invasion only five years before, but this time the breakaway republic was submitted to ferocious artillery attacks and airstrikes. In both cases, the result was the near-total destruction of historic centers.

Russia's military gave fighters in the southern city until 5am to lay down their arms and warned local officials they would face “military tribunals” if they ...

The most bombarded city in Ukraine's war with Russia is key to Moscow's military campaign.

Ukrainian authorities also said Russia shelled a chemical plant in north-eastern Ukraine, causing an ammonia leak, and hit a military training base in the west ...

The agency said that, and a lack of firefighters to protect the area’s radiation-tainted forests as the weather warms, could mean a “significant deterioration” in the ability to control the spread of radiation in Ukraine and beyond. A cluster of villages on Kyiv’s north-west edge, including Irpin and Bucha, have been all but cut off by Russian forces and are on the verge of humanitarian catastrophe, regional officials said. Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed the leak was a “planned provocation” by Ukrainian forces to falsely accuse Russia of a chemical attack. In the Black Sea port city of Odesa, authorities said Russian forces damaged civilian houses in a strike on Monday. The fall of Mariupol would allow Russian forces in southern and eastern Ukraine to unite. US President Joe Biden was expected to talk later on Monday with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Britain to discuss the war, before heading later in the week to Brussels and then Poland for in-person talks. Ukrainian officials have defiantly rejected a Russian demand that their forces in Mariupol lay down arms and raise white flags in exchange for safe passage out of the besieged strategic port city. The Russian Ministry of Defence said authorities in Mariupol could face a military tribunal if they sided with what it described as “bandits”, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported. Ukrainian officials have defiantly rejected a Russian demand that their forces in Mariupol lay down arms and raise white flags in exchange for safe passage out of the besieged strategic port city. Ukrainian officials rejected the Russian proposal for safe passage out of Mariupol even before Russia’s deadline of 5am Moscow time (0200 GMT) for a response came and went. The encircled southern city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov has seen some of the worst horrors of the war, under Russian pounding for more than three weeks. In the capital Kyiv, Russian shelling devastated a shopping centre near the city centre, killing at least eight people and leaving a sea of rubble amid scarred high-rises.