Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister has rejected Russian calls for soldiers in the besieged city of Mariupol to surrender.
Iryna Vereshchuk's response came after Russia's military called on Ukrainian fighters battling Russian troops for control of the city to "lay down your arms" and warned that a "terrible humanitarian catastrophe" was unfolding.
"All who lay down their arms are guaranteed safe passage out of Mariupol," said Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, the director of the Russian National Centre for Defence Management.
"There can be no talk of any surrender, laying down of arms. We have already informed the Russian side about this," Ms Vereshchuk told the news outlet Ukrainian Pravda.
Mariupol has suffered some of the heaviest bombardment since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
Many of its 400,000 residents remain trapped in the city with little, if any, food, water and power.
City authorities said nearly 10 per cent of the city's population have fled over the past week, risking their lives in convoys.
Colonel-General Mizintsev had said humanitarian corridors for civilians would be opened eastwards and westwards out of Mariupol at 10am, Moscow time, on Monday.
But Ms Vereshchuk later said the two sides had only agreed to evacuate people from eight other towns and cities, not Mariupol.
She said efforts to reach Mariupol with humanitarian supplies continued to fail.
Previous bids to allow residents to evacuate Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities have failed, or have been only partially successful, with bombardments continuing as civilians tried to flee.
Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for the failure to open such corridors in recent weeks.
Colonel-General Mizintsev, without providing evidence, said that Ukrainian "bandits", "neo-Nazis" and nationalists had engaged in "mass terror" inside Mariupol and gone on a killing spree in the city.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that the siege of Mariupol was "a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come".
Colonel-General Mizintsev denied Russia was using heavy weapons in Mariupol.
He said Russia had evacuated 59,304 people out of the city but that 130,000 civilians remained as effective hostages there.
He said 330,686 people had been evacuated from Ukraine by Russia since the start of the "operation".
The Mariupol city council said on its Telegram channel late on Saturday that several thousand residents had been "deported" to Russia against their will during the past week.
Ukrainian politician Inna Sovsun said those citizens were being taken for forced labour in remote parts of Russia.
"They're being forced to sign papers that they will stay in that area for two or three years and they will work for free in those areas," she said.
Mariupol authorities said evacuees' mobile phones and documents had been inspected by Russian troops before they were sent to "remote cities in Russia".
Ms Vereshchuk said more than 7,000 people were evacuated from Ukrainian cities through humanitarian corridors on Sunday, more than half of them from Mariupol.
She said the government planned to send nearly 50 buses to Mariupol on Monday for further evacuations.
Steve McAndrew from the Red Cross said the organisation was doing everything it could to reach the people there.
"The latest we've heard is that there's around 350,000 people kind of trapped in there," he said.
"My colleagues in the International Committee of the Red Cross are working there with the Ukraine Red Cross.
"It's very, very difficult for access. It's an intense situation."
EU policy chief accuses Russia of war crimes in Mariupol
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine, most notably in Mariupol.
"What's happening in Mariupol is a massive war crime," he said.
"Destroying everything, bombarding and killing everybody in an indiscriminate manner."
He said Russia had lost any moral high ground and underlined that "war also has law".
The International Criminal Court in the Netherlands is gathering evidence about any possible war crimes in Ukraine, but Russia, like the United States, does not recognise the tribunal's jurisdiction.
Civilians killed as shells hit homes in Kyiv
Shelling hit residential houses and a shopping centre in Kyiv's Podil district late on Sunday, reportedly killing at least four people, according to local authorities.
"According to the information we have at the moment, several homes and one of the shopping centres [were hit]," Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on his Telegram channel.
He said rescue teams were putting out a large fire at the shopping centre, while other details were still to be confirmed.
Reuters was not able immediately to verify the reports on the ground.
Further east, an ammonia leak at a chemical plant in the city of Sumy contaminated an area with a radius of more than 2.5 kilometres, officials said.
Sumy regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyy later said the leak was contained but did not reveal what caused it.
The Sumykhimprom plant is on the eastern outskirts of the city, which has a population of about 263,000 and has been regularly shelled by Russian troops in recent weeks.
The UN human rights office said at least 902 civilians had been killed, as of midnight Saturday, although the real toll was probably much higher.
Ukrainian prosecutors said 112 children had been killed.
The UN refugee agency said 10 million Ukrainians had been displaced, including some 3.4 million who had fled to neighbouring countries such as Poland.
Officials in the region said they were reaching capacity to comfortably house refugees.
Israeli PM offers to host peace talks in Jerusalem
Israel's Prime Minister Naftali Bennett offered to host peace talks between Mr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin in Jerusalem.
Mr Bennett was speaking after Mr Zelenskyy gave a video address to Israel's parliament.
The Israeli Prime Minister, who has acted as intermediary between the two warring countries in recent weeks, said Israel would "continue — together with other friends in the world — to try and bridge the gap and bring an end to the war."
"There's still a long way to go, because as I stated, there are a number of controversial issues, some of them fundamental," he said.
Mr Zelenskyy said Jerusalem was "the right place to find peace. If possible".
In the past week, Mr Bennett has intensified his efforts to bring the two sides together and has spoken on several occasions to both Mr Zelenskyy and Mr Putin.
Last week he flew to Moscow in secret to meet the Kremlin leader.
Mr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, used his daily address to the Ukrainian people to reject Russian accusations that he heads an administration that espouses "Nazism".
Switching from his usual Ukrainian to Russian in his remarks, he said: "Russian propagandists have a tough job on their hands today. For the first time, a Ukrainian president spoke to the parliament of Israel and, by video recording, to the people of Israel, a Ukrainian accused of Nazism by Moscow."
At a conference on Monday, Mr Bennett said there had been advances in ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine, but "very large" gaps remained between the two sides.
ABC/wires
