Russia calls on Ukraine to surrender besieged Mariupol as Zelensky continues pleas for help
CBC
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Russian and Ukrainian forces fought for control of the port city of Mariupol on Sunday, local authorities said.
Mariupol has suffered some of the heaviest bombardments since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Many of its 400,000 residents remain trapped there with little if any food, water and power.
Fighting continued inside the city on Sunday, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said, without elaborating.
Russia called on Ukrainian forces in Mariupol to lay down their arms, saying a "terrible humanitarian catastrophe" was unfolding.
It said defenders who did so were guaranteed safe passage out of the city and humanitarian corridors would be opened from Mariupol at 10 a.m. Moscow time on Monday.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 7,295 people were evacuated from Ukrainian cities through humanitarian corridors on Sunday, 3,985 of them from Mariupol. She said the government planned to send nearly 50 buses to Mariupol on Monday for further evacuations.
Russia and Ukraine have made agreements throughout the war on humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians, but have accused each other of frequent violations of those.
Capturing Mariupol would help Russian forces secure a land corridor to the Crimea peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
The city council said on its Telegram channel late on Saturday that several thousand residents had been "deported" to Russia over the past week. Russian news agencies said buses had carried hundreds of people Moscow calls refugees from Mariupol to Russia in recent days.
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told CNN the deportation accounts were "disturbing" and "unconscionable" if true, but said Washington had not yet confirmed them.
Russian forces reportedly bombed an art school on Saturday where 400 residents were sheltering, but the number of casualties was not yet known, Mariupol's council said.
Reuters could not independently verify the claims. Russia denies targeting civilians.
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the siege of Mariupol a war crime and "a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come."
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