LEOPOLIS, Ukraine (AP) Ukrainian authorities on Monday rejected a Russian demand that its forces in Mariupol lay down their arms and hoist white flags in exchange for safe passage from the besieged strategic port.
While Russia continued its offensive to break Mariupol, its offensive in other parts of the country has stalled. Western analysts and governments say the conflict has turned into a war of attrition as Russia continues to bomb cities.
In Kyiv, a shopping mall in the populous Podil district was still smoldering Monday morning after an attack reduced it to a ruin surrounded by multistory towers. The force of the blast blew out all the windows in the neighboring block, twisting their metal frames and killing at least eight people, according to authorities.
Ukrainian authorities also accused Russia of bombing a chemical plant in the northeast of the country, causing a toxic cloud of ammonia and attacking a military training area in the west of the country with cruise missiles.
The besieged southern city of Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov, has suffered some of the worst horrors of the war after more than three weeks of Russian bombardment. Ukrainian and Western authorities have described the brutal siege as a war crime.
Russia on Sunday attacked an art school where about 400 people were taking refuge, just hours before it offered to open two corridors to allow its defenders to leave the city in exchange for the surrender, Ukrainian authorities said.
The death toll is unclear, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a video message early Monday.
“They lie under the rubble and we don’t know how many of them survived,” he said.
Russian ColonelGeneral Mikhail Mizintsev had offered two corridors, one east to Russia and the other west to other parts of Ukraine. He did not say what Russia plans to do if the offer is rejected.
According to staterun RIA Novosti news agency, the Russian Defense Ministry said authorities in Mariupol could face a military court if they side with what they describe as “bandits”.
Ukrainian authorities rejected Russia’s offer of safe passage to leave Mariupol before the 5 a.m. deadline set by Moscow.
“There is no question of surrender and laying down of arms,” Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk told Ukraine’s Pravda news agency. “We’ve already reported that to the Russians.”
Mariupol Mayor Piotr Andryushchenko also rejected the offer soon after it was made, saying in a Facebook post that he didn’t have to wait until morning to respond and curse the Russians, according to Interfax Ukraine news agency.
The attack on the art school was the second attack on a public building used as a shelter in Mariupol reported by authorities in less than a week. A bomb hit a theater on Wednesday where more than 1,000 people had taken shelter.
Ukrainian authorities have not reported a search of the theater since Friday, when they said at least 130 people were rescued and another 1,300 were trapped by rubble.
Local authorities and aid groups say food, water and electricity are in short supply in Mariupol and fighting is keeping humanitarian caravans away. Communications are broken, leaving the remaining residents in a chaotic struggle for survival.
“What is happening in Mariupol is a huge war crime,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday.
Previous attempts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities have failed or only partially succeeded, thwarted by continued shelling as civilians attempted to flee.
Some of those who managed to flee the city tearfully hugged relatives as they arrived by train in Lviv, western Ukraine, on Sunday.
“There was fighting on every street. Every house became a target, said Olga Nikitina, who was hugged by her brother as she got off the train. “The shots shattered the windows. The temperature in the apartment was below zero.
Mariupol is an important target for Russia because its fall would allow it to link its forces in southern and eastern Ukraine. But Western military analysts say that even if the city were taken, the troops advancing there block by block could be too exhausted to secure Russian advances on other fronts.
After three weeks of invasion, both sides appeared to be trying to wear each other down, experts say. Stranded Russian troops launched longrange attacks on cities and military bases, while Ukrainian forces launched swift strikes and attempted to cut off Russian supply routes.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told CBS the Ukrainian resistance meant that (Putin’s) “forces on the ground have essentially come to a standstill.”
Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine continued via video conference but failed to narrow differences. Russia calls for Ukraine to disarm, Kyiv says Moscow’s troops must withdraw from across the country.
US President Joe Biden was later on Monday to discuss the war with leaders from France, Germany, Italy and Britain before traveling to Brussels this week and then to Poland for facetoface meetings.
Hundreds of men, women and children have been killed in Russian attacks on major Ukrainian cities.
The United Nations has confirmed 902 civilian deaths in the war but concedes the true number is likely much higher. Almost 3.4 million people have fled Ukraine. Russian death estimates vary, but even conservative numbers are in the low thousands.
In another worrying development, radiation sensors around the Chernobyl facility, the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents in 1986, have stopped working, Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory agency said.
The agency said this issue, and firefighters’ failure to protect forests that have been radioactively contaminated for decades as temperatures have risen, could mean a “significant deterioration” in the ability to contain radiation spread not only in Ukraine but beyond addition to control the borders of the country.
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Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.