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Ukraine rejected a Russian ultimatum to surrender the besieged port city of Mariupol on Monday, as overnight Russian strikes destroyed a shopping mall in the capital Kyiv, killing eight people.
Almost 350,000 people are trapped without water and electricity in the southern city of Mariupol, which has been bombarded by Russian troops for almost a month in what EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described as a “massive war crime”.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian bombs struck targets overnight, allegedly damaging a chemical plant in the north of the country causing an “ammonia leakage”. Russian strikes, likely a missile, laid waste to a shopping mall in Kyiv, whose mayor announced a new curfew.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Europe to significantly dial up pressure on Moscow to halt its invasion, saying the continent must cease all trade with Russia. “No euros for the occupiers. Close all of your ports to them.
Don’t export them your goods. Deny energy resources. Push for Russia to leave Ukraine,” Zelensky said in his latest video address.
Ukrainian leaders also stressed they were standing firm against invaders in Mariupol, which is suffering a critical humanitarian crisis. Defenders of the port city have “played a huge role in destroying the enemy’s plans and enhancing our defence,” said Ukraine’s defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov.
“Today Mariupol is saving Kyiv, Dnipro and Odessa. Everyone must understand this.”
The Kremlin said there was still no basis for possible talks between President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky and that significant progress needed to be made first.
The Kremlin’s military command had warned authorities in Mariupol had until “5am… on March 21” to respond to eight pages of demands, which Ukrainian officials said would amount to a capitulation.
Rejecting the ultimatum by Russia, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Moscow should instead allow the trapped residents to escape.
Russia is boosting air and sea military operations as it struggles to turn the tide of war in Ukraine, where the “dexterity” of the defence mounted by Kyiv is stalling the invasion, the Pentagon said Monday.
The Kremlin is “desperate” to increase its momentum in a war in which its troops have grown “frustrated and flummoxed” by a resistance that has shown durability despite being outmanned and outgunned, a senior US defence official said.
Putin’s forces have ramped up their sorties over and near Ukraine, flying more than 300 missions in the past 24 hours, with Kyiv likewise increasing their own air operations in a bid to deny Russia superiority in the skies, the official told reporters.
Few of the operations are dogfights, as Russia’s military tends to fire air-to-ground missiles at Ukrainian targets from Russian or Belarusian skies.
“They’re not venturing very far or for very long into Ukrainian airspace, because the Ukrainians have been defending their airspace with great dexterity,” said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the northern Black Sea, Russia is exhibiting “increased naval activity” in its use of multiple warships that are contributing to the shelling around the key port city of Odessa, he said.
But he added it was not a clear sign of an imminent amphibious assault on Odessa, where civilians have been bracing for attack.
Mariupol is a pivotal target in Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine — providing a land bridge between Russian forces in Crimea to the southwest and Russian-controlled territory to the north and east.
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