Ukraine soldiers in Mariupol will “fight to the end” says the country’s prime minister, amid threats from Vladimir Putin to kill every last one.
The besieged port city has been pulverised after seven weeks of near constant shelling, killing around 20,000 residents.
Roughly 100,000 are managing to survive with its last-known pocket of resistance fighters holed up in a four-square mile steel plant.
Over the weekend Russia gave them until Saturday to give up- a demand which was ignored.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said troops in Mariupol were still fighting despite a Russian demand to surrender by dawn.
"The city still has not fallen," he told ABC's "This Week" programme, adding that Ukrainian soldiers continue to control some parts of the city.
Russia said on Saturday it had control of urban parts of the city, with some Ukrainian fighters remaining in the Azovstal steelworks overlooking the Sea of Azov.
Capturing Mariupol, the main port in the southeastern region of Donbas, would be a strategic prize for Russia, connecting territory held by pro-Russian separatists in the east with the Crimea region that Moscow annexed in 2014.
After failing to overcome Ukrainian resistance in the north, the Russian military has refocused its ground offensive on Donbas while maintaining long-distance strikes elsewhere including the capital, Kyiv.
About four million Ukrainians have fled the country, cities have been shattered and thousands have died since the start of the invasion on Feb. 24.
"The occupiers will be responsible for everything they did in Ukraine," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on his Telegram account, posting images of destruction he said were akin to the "terrible times" of World War Two.
Drone footage carried by the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti on Sunday showed mile after mile of shattered buildings in Mariupol.
In this morning’s briefing the Ministry of Defence claimed Mariupol’s ongoing resistance is slowing the invader’s advance in the rest of Ukraine.
It read: “Russian commanders will be concerned by the time it is taking to subdue Mariupol.
“Concerted Ukrainian resistance has severely tested Russian forces and diverted men and materiel, slowing Russia’s advance elsewhere.
“The effort to capture Mariupol has come at significant cost to its residents. Large areas of infrastructure have been destroyed whilst the population has suffered significant casualties.
“The targeting of populated areas within Mariupol aligns with Russia’s approach to Chechnya in 1999 and Syria in 2016.
“This is despite the 24 February 2022 claims of Russia’s Defence Ministry that Russia would neither strike cities nor threaten the Ukrainian population.”
It comes as Russia struck with several missiles in the city of Lviv on Monday.
The Kremlin has stepped up attacks in the wake of the sinking of its flagship Moskva last week.
Russia said on Sunday it had attacked an ammunition plant near Kyiv overnight with precision-guided missiles, the third such strike in as many days.
Explosions were also reported in Kramatorsk, the eastern city where rockets earlier this month killed at least 57 people at a train station crowded with civilians trying to evacuate ahead of the Russian offensive.
