A Russian ultimatum to Ukrainian troops in Mariupol to surrender or die expired on Wednesday afternoon with no mass capitulation, but the commander of a unit believed to be holding out in the besieged city said his forces could survive just days or hours.
The United Nations said the number of refugees who have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24 now exceeded five million. More than half are children.
Ukraine said it had so far held off an assault by thousands of Russian troops attempting to advance in what Kyiv calls the Battle of the Donbas, a new campaign to seize two eastern provinces Moscow claims on behalf of separatists.
In a video, the commander of Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, one of the last units believed to be holding out in Mariupol, asked for international help to escape the port city’s siege.
“This is our appeal to the world. It may be our last. We may have only a few days or hours left,” said Major Serhiy Volyna in a video uploaded to Facebook. “The enemy units are dozens of times larger than ours, they have dominance in the air, in artillery, in ground troops, in equipment and in tanks.”
Volyna spoke in front of a white brick wall in what sounded like a crowded room. Reuters could not verify where or when the video was filmed or who else might have been there.
Russia’s nearly eight-week-long invasion has failed to capture any of Ukraine’s largest cities. Moscow was forced to retreat from northern Ukraine after an assault on Kyiv was repelled last month, but has poured troops back in for an assault on the east that began this week.
MARIUPOL IN RUINS
In the ruins of Mariupol, site of the war’s heaviest fighting and worst humanitarian catastrophe, Russia was hitting the last main Ukrainian stronghold, the Azovstal steel plant, with bunker-buster bombs, Kyiv said.
Read more: BIDEN TO ANNOUNCE ANOTHER LARGE MILITARY AID PACKAGE FOR UKRAINE: SOURCES
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said an estimated 1,000 civilians were sheltering at the plant. He said he remained ready to swap Russian prisoners of war in exchange for safe passage for the trapped civilians and Ukrainian soldiers.
Dozens of civilians later boarded a small convoy of buses in Mariupol that then departed to Ukraine-controlled territory, two Reuters witnesses said.
Mariupol city authorities said earlier on Wednesday they were hoping to evacuate about 6,000 people under a preliminary agreement with Russia – the first in weeks – on establishing a safe corridor.
Russia has been trying to take full control of Mariupol since the war’s early days. Its capture would be a big strategic prize, linking territory held by pro-Russian separatists in the east with the Crimea region that Moscow annexed in 2014.
Once a prosperous port of 400,000 people, Mariupol has been reduced to a blasted wasteland with corpses in the streets and residents confined to cellars. Ukrainian officials say tens of thousands of civilians have died there.
RUSSIAN ADVANCE
Ukrainian presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovych said Russia was focusing on advancing towards the strategically important Donbas city of Sloviansk, but “so far they are not succeeding”. Targeting that area from several directions is part of an apparent effort to surround Ukrainian forces in the east.
Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov tweeted that Russia’s “military capacity has been significantly diminished” since the start of the war. “We’re defeating & will continue to defeat the occupiers!”
Peace talks have been stalled. The Kremlin accused Kyiv on Wednesday of delaying the talks and changing its positions. Kyiv accuses Moscow of blocking talks by refusing humanitarian ceasefires, and Zelenskiy said he knew nothing of a document the Kremlin said it had sent concerning peace talks.
Moscow is hoping its advantage in firepower will give it more success in the east than in the campaign against Kyiv, when its overstretched supply lines were attacked by nimble small units.
President Joe Biden will convene top U.S. military leaders on Wednesday in an annual White House gathering that takes on special significance as the war in Ukraine enters a risky new phase and Washington plans more military aid.
Meanwhile, Russia test-launched its Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, a new addition to its nuclear arsenal that Putin said had no peer and would give Moscow’s enemies something to think about.
