Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of wanting to “destroy” the entire eastern region of Donbass while the last remaining forces in the strategic port of Mariupol prepared for a final defense of the city.
After rockets slammed into Lviv on Monday morning and Kharkiv faced further shelling, Moscow is pushing for a major victory in the southern city as it works to seize control of Donbass and forge a land corridor to already annexed Crimea.
Ukraine has pledged to keep fighting and defending the city, defying a Russian ultimatum on Sunday that ordered the remaining militants at the encircled Azovstal Steelworks to lay down their arms and surrender.
Ukrainian authorities have urged the people of Donbass to move west to avoid a full-scale Russian offensive to capture the composite Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
“Russian troops are preparing for an offensive operation in the east of our country in the near future. They want to literally finish off and destroy Donbass,” Zelenskyy said in a statement in the evening, repeating a request for foreign governments to send weapons for his troops.
Since Russian troops invaded the former Soviet state on February 24, Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukraine’s unexpectedly fierce resistance.
“The city still hasn’t fallen,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Sunday. “There is still our armed forces, our soldiers. So they’re going to fight to the end,” he told ABC’s This Week. “We will not surrender.”
While several major cities were besieged, none fell, with the exception of Cherson in the south, and more than 900 cities were recaptured.
After the Ukrainian militants’ refusal to give up Mariupol, Russian troops will reportedly block the city for entry and exit on Monday and issue “movement cards” for those who remain, an aide to the mayor said.
Petro Andriushchenko made the claim in an update on messaging app Telegram on Sunday, sharing a photo that appeared to show a line of people waiting for passports.
Luhansk Governor Sergiy Gaiday said the coming week will be “difficult”. “It could be the last time we have a chance to save you,” he wrote on Facebook.
Russian forces continued shelling the eastern Luhansk region and two people died in the town of Zolote, Gaiday told Ukrainian media earlier in the day.
Two people died and four were injured in attacks on the cities of Marinka and Novopol west of Donetsk, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram. An airstrike hit an armaments factory in the capital Kyiv.
Five rockets reportedly hit Lviv on Monday morning, according to the city’s mayor, adding that authorities are looking for more detailed information.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, at least five people have been killed and 20 injured in a series of strikes 21 km (13 miles) from the Russian border.
Maksym Chaustov, the head of the Kharkiv region health department, confirmed the deaths there after a series of strikes that journalists at the scene said sparked fires across the city and ripped off roofs from buildings.
“The whole house rumbled and shook,” 71-year-old Svitlana Pelelygina told Agence France-Presse as she inspected her destroyed apartment. “This is where everything started to burn.”
“I called the fire department. They said, ‘We’re on our way, but we’ve also been shot at.’”
Meanwhile, Ukraine has completed a questionnaire that will be a starting point for the European Union’s decision on membership.
“Today I can say that the document has been finalized by the Ukrainian side,” Ihor Zhovkva, the deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office, told Ukrainian public broadcaster on Sunday.
The European Commission must issue a recommendation on Ukraine’s fulfillment of the necessary accession criteria, he added. “We expect the recommendation to be … positive, and then the ball will be in the hands of the EU member states.”
Zhovkva said Ukraine is expected to gain candidate country status for EU membership in June during a scheduled European Council meeting.
Residents of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine were told to evacuate immediately. The head of the region’s military administration, Sergei Gaidai, claimed that the “decision is yours”, but warned that the cemetery “is getting bigger every day”.
“Next week could be difficult. [This] maybe the last time we have a chance to save you,” he said in a statement late Sunday.
In the city of Kramatorsk, also to the east, the orthodox Palm Sunday gave its residents some respite from the expected Russian attack. About 40 people – mostly women with colorful headscarves – attended the service in the Svyato Pokrovsky Orthodox Church.
“It’s very difficult and scary right now,” said a community leader as she arrived at the red-brick church, topped by four gleaming domes.
One young mother, Nadia, said she refused to be evacuated for fear of traveling alone with her two children and leaving her relatives in Kramatorsk. “We don’t go down to the basement every time there is one [bomb] Siren. It’s too stressful for them [the children],” She said.
“We have our place in the basement just in case, but prefer to stay in the house if possible. We dim the light.”
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk has urged Russian forces to let residents flee besieged Mariupol, saying humanitarian corridors allowing civilians to escape would not open on Sunday after failing to agree on terms with Muscovites armed forces would have agreed.
The United Nations World Food Program says more than 100,000 civilians in Mariupol are on the brink of starvation and lack water and heating. Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said the city was “on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe,” adding that evidence of alleged Russian atrocities was being collected there.
“We will hand everything over to The Hague. There will be no impunity.”
The mayor of Bucha – a town near Kyiv where the discovery of dead civilians sparked international condemnations and accusations of war crimes – said Russian troops had raped men, women and children there.
Zelenskyi said he had invited his French counterpart to visit Ukraine to see for himself evidence that Russian forces had committed “genocide” – a tenure President Emmanuel Macron avoided.
“I spoke to him yesterday,” Zelensky told CNN in an interview that was taped Friday but aired Sunday. “I just told him I want him to understand that this is not a war, this is nothing more than genocide. I invited him to come when he has the opportunity. He’ll come and see it and I’m sure he’ll understand.”
But Russia has warned the US of “unpredictable consequences” if it sends its “most sensitive” weapons systems to Ukraine.
Her Defense Ministry on Saturday claimed to have shot down a Ukrainian transport plane with weapons supplied by Western nations in the Odessa region.
On Sunday, spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Russian missiles had destroyed ammunition, fuel and lubricants depots in eastern Ukraine and 44 Ukrainian military installations, including command posts.
He said Russian air defense systems shot down two Ukrainian MiG-29 planes in the Kharkiv region and a drone near the city of Pavlograd.