Kyiv, UKRAINE – Ukrainian fighters hiding in a steel plant in the last known pocket of resistance in the devastated city of Mariupol ignored an ultimatum to surrender or die from the Russians on Sunday and opposed the takeover of a strategically vital port.
The fall of Mariupol, the site of a relentless 7-week siege that turned much of the city into a smoldering ruin, will be Moscow’s biggest victory in the war to date and will free troops to take part in a potentially culminating battle for industrial control. east of Ukraine.
While its missiles and missiles hit other parts of the country, Russia estimated that 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers and about 400 foreign mercenaries were dug into the huge Azovstal steel plant, which covers more than 11 square kilometers (4 square miles) and is permeated with tunnels.
Moscow has given defenders a lunch deadline to surrender, saying those who laid down their arms were “guaranteed to save their lives”. The Ukrainians rejected it, just as they did with previous ultimatums.
“We will fight to the end, to victory in this war,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmihal promised on ABC’s This Week. He said Ukraine was ready to end the war through diplomacy if possible, “but we have no intention of surrendering.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sent Easter greetings via Twitter, saying: “The Lord’s Resurrection is a testimony to the victory of life over death, of good over evil.”
If Mariupol falls, Russian forces there are expected to join a total offensive in the coming days to control Donbass, the eastern industrial region the Kremlin has decided to take after failing to take Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
The relentless bombing and street fighting in Mariupol has claimed the lives of at least 21,000 people, according to Ukrainians. A maternity hospital was hit by a deadly Russian air strike in the first weeks of the war, and about 300 people were killed in the bombing of a theater where civilians were hiding.
Approximately 100,000 of the pre-war population of 450,000 remained in the city, trapped without food, water, heat or electricity during a siege that made Mariupol the scene of some of the war’s worst suffering.
“All those who will continue the resistance will be destroyed,” said Major General Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, announcing the latest ultimatum.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hana Malyar described Mariupol as a “shield defending Ukraine” as Russian troops prepare for battle in the predominantly Russian-speaking Donbass, where Moscow-backed separatists already control part of the territory.
Meanwhile, Russian forces have carried out airstrikes near Kyiv and elsewhere in an apparent effort to weaken Ukraine’s military capabilities ahead of the expected attack.
After the humiliating sinking of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship last week in what Ukrainians boasted of as a missile attack, the Kremlin has vowed to step up strikes on the capital.
Russia said on Sunday that it had attacked an ammunition factory near Kyiv at night with precision missiles, the third such strike in so many days.
Explosions were also reported overnight in Kramatorsk, the eastern city, where rockets killed at least 57 people earlier this month at a station crowded with civilians trying to evacuate before the Russian offensive.
A regional official in eastern Ukraine said at least two people were killed when Russian forces opened fire on apartment buildings in the town of Zolote, near the Donbass front line.
At least five people were killed in a Russian shelling in Kharkov, Ukraine’s second-largest city, on Sunday, regional authorities said. The barrage crashed into apartment buildings, leaving the streets scattered with broken glass and other debris, including part of at least one rocket.
Russia also said its forces shot down two Ukrainian MiG-29 fighters in the Kharkiv region and destroyed two Ukrainian command posts and a S-300 surface-to-air missile radar system in the town of Avdeevka, north of Donetsk. The Ukrainian authorities did not immediately confirm the claimed losses.
Malyar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, said the Russians continued to launch air strikes on Mariupol and could prepare for a landing to bolster their ground forces.
Taking over the southern city of the Sea of Azov would allow Russia to fully secure a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which it took away from Ukraine in 2014, and deprive Ukraine of a major port and its valuable industrial assets.
The impending offensive in the east, if successful, will give Russian President Vladimir Putin a vital part of the country and a much-needed victory that he could sell to the Russian people amid growing casualties in the war and economic hardship caused by sanctions. West.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nechamer, who met with Putin in Moscow this week – the first European leader to do so since the February 24 invasion – said the Russian president was “in his own military logic” for Ukraine.
In an interview with NBC’s Nehamer Press, he said he thought Putin believed he was winning the war, and “we need to look him in the eye and confront him with what we see in Ukraine.”
Without explicitly mentioning Putin’s decision to invade, Pope Francis made a painful Easter request for peace in Ukraine, condemning “this brutal and senseless war in which he was involved.”
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Chernov reported from Kharkov. Yesica Fisch of Kramatorsk, Ukraine, and journalists from the Associated Press around the world contributed to this report.
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