Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has accused Russia of wanting to “destroy” the entire eastern region of Donbass, as the last remaining forces in the strategic port of Mariupol were preparing for final defense on Monday.
With missiles hitting Lviv on Monday morning and Kharkiv under heavy shelling, Moscow is also pushing for a big victory in the southern city as it pushes for control of Donbass and the creation of a land corridor to the already annexed Crimea.
But Ukraine has vowed to fight and defend the city, opposing a Russian ultimatum on Sunday that called on other fighters at the besieged Azovstal steel plant to lay down their arms and surrender.
Ukrainian authorities have called on the people of Donbass to move west to escape a large-scale Russian offensive to seize its constituent regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
“Russian troops are preparing for an offensive operation in the eastern part of our country in the near future. They literally want to finish and destroy Donbass, “Zelenski said in an evening statement, in which he also reiterated a request for foreign governments to send weapons to his troops.
Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukraine’s unexpectedly fierce resistance after Russian troops invaded the former Soviet state on February 24.
“The city has not fallen yet,” Prime Minister Denis Schmihal said on Sunday. “We still have our military forces, our soldiers. So they will fight to the end, “he told ABC’s This Week.” We will not give up. “
While several major cities were under siege, he said, none – except Kherson to the south – fell and more than 900 cities were captured.
Following the refusal of Ukrainian fighters to surrender Mariupol, Russian troops reportedly will close the city for entry and exit on Monday and issue “traffic passes” to those who remain, an adviser to the mayor said.
Petro Andryushchenko made this statement in an update to the Telegram news app on Sunday, sharing a photo that appears to show a queue of people waiting for passes.
Luhansk Governor Sergei Gaidai said next week would be “difficult”. “It may be the last time we have a chance to save you,” he wrote on Facebook.
Russian forces continued to shell the eastern Luhansk region, killing two people in the town of Zolote, Gaidai told Ukrainian media earlier in the day.
Two people were killed and four were injured in attacks on the towns of Marinka and Novopol, west of Donetsk, regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko told Telegram. An air strike struck an arms factory in the capital Kyiv.
Five rockets reportedly hit Lviv on Monday morning, according to the mayor, adding that authorities were looking for more detailed information.
In the second Ukrainian city of Kharkov, at least five people were killed and 20 injured in a series of strikes 21 km (13 miles) from the Russian border.
Maxim Haustov, head of the Kharkiv region’s health department, confirmed the deaths there after a series of strikes, which local journalists said had set fires in the city and torn roofs off buildings.
“The whole house is thundering and trembling,” Svetlana Peleligina, 71, told Agence France-Presse as she inspected her ruined apartment. “Everything here is on fire.”
“I called the fire department. They said: “We are on our way, but we were also shelled.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine has completed a questionnaire that will be a starting point for the European Union to decide on its membership.
“Today I can say that the document was completed by the Ukrainian side,” Igor Zhovkva, deputy head of Zelensky’s cabinet, told Ukrainian public television on Sunday.
The European Commission will have to issue a recommendation on Ukraine’s compliance with the necessary membership criteria, he added. “We expect the recommendation … to be positive and then the ball will be on the side of the EU member states.
Zhovkva said Ukraine expects to gain EU candidate status in June during a scheduled European Council meeting.
Residents of Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine have been urged to evacuate immediately. The head of the regional military administration, Sergei Gaidai, said the “decision is yours”, but warned that the cemetery was “growing with each passing day”.
“Next week may be difficult. [This] “It may be the last time we still have a chance to save you,” he said in a statement late Sunday.
In the city of Kramatorsk, also in the east, the Orthodox Palm Sunday gave its residents some rest before the expected Russian attack.
In the Orthodox Church of the Intercession, about 40 people – mostly women wearing colorful headscarves – attended the service.
“It’s very difficult and scary right now,” a parishioner said when she arrived at the red-brick church decorated with four gleaming domes.
A young mother, Nadia, said she refused to be evacuated for fear of traveling alone with her two children and leaving her relatives in Kramatorsk.
“We don’t go to the basement every time there is [bomb] cheese. This is too stressful for them [the children],” she said.
“Just in case, we have a place in the basement, but we prefer to stay in the house if possible. We dim the lights. ”
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk called on Russian forces to allow people to flee besieged Mariupol, saying humanitarian corridors allowing civilians to escape would not open on Sunday after failing to reach an agreement with Moscow forces.
The UN World Food Program says more than 100,000 civilians in Mariupol are on the brink of starvation and lack water and heating. Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mikhail Fedorov, said the city was on the “edge of a humanitarian catastrophe”, adding that evidence of alleged Russian atrocities was being gathered there.
“We will hand everything over to The Hague. There will be no impunity. “
The mayor of Bucha, a town near Kyiv where the discovery of dead civilians has sparked international condemnation and war crimes charges, said Russian troops raped men as well as women and children there.
Zelensky said he had invited his French counterpart to visit Ukraine to see personal evidence that Russian forces had committed “genocide” – a mandate that President Emmanuel Macron is avoiding.
“I spoke to him yesterday,” Zelenski told CNN in an interview recorded on Friday but broadcast on Sunday.
“I just told him that I want him to understand that this is not a war, but nothing but genocide. I invited him to come when he had the opportunity. He will come to see and I am sure he will understand.
But Russia has warned the United States of “unpredictable consequences” if it sends its “most sensitive” weapons systems to Ukraine.
His defense ministry said on Saturday that it had shot down a Ukrainian transport plane in the Odessa region carrying weapons supplied by Western countries.
On Sunday, spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Russian missiles had destroyed warehouses for ammunition, fuel and lubricants in eastern Ukraine and 44 Ukrainian military facilities, including command posts.
He said Russian air defense systems shot down two Ukrainian MiG-29s in the Kharkiv region and a drone near the city of Pavlograd.
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