‘Surrender… your lives will be spared,’ Russia claims control over Mariupol

Russia has warned Ukrainian forces fighting to defend Mariupol to surrender starting 3 am GMT to save their lives. Moscow claims to have secured most urban areas but a small band of fighters remain inside a steelworks factory in the city, news agency AFP reported.

Mariupol has been the scene of some of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in this war. Moscow’s claims – to have all but taken control – could not be independently confirmed, AFP reported.

Russia said it has cleared all of Mariupol’s “urban areas” of Ukrainian forces, and called on remaining troops to lay down their arms to avoid being killed. Ukraine has rejected similar Russian demands in the past.

If true, it will be the first major city to have fallen to Russian forces since the invasion began February 24. It is the main port of the Donbas, a region of two provinces in the southeast which Moscow demands be fully ceded to separatists.

Ukrainian soldiers resisted a Russian ultimatum to lay down arms on Sunday in the pulverised port of Mariupol, which Moscow said its forces had almost completely seized in what would be its biggest prize of the war.

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.

“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.

“The elimination of our soldiers, of our men (in Mariupol) will put an end to any negotiation” of peace between Russia and Ukraine, declared the president in remarks reproduced by the news website Ukraïnska Pravda, warning that the two sides would then find themselves in “an impasse”.

Implicitly criticizing Russia, Pope Francis pleaded for an end to the bloodshed and lamented the “Easter of War” during his address in St. Peter’s Square after Mass.

“May there be peace for war-torn Ukraine, so sorely tried by the violence and destruction of the cruel and senseless war into which it was dragged,” he said.

The European Union will “look at” Russia’s Sberbank in its next round of sanctions over the war in Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag, without offering details.

“We continue to look at the banking sector, especially Sberbank, which alone accounts for 37 per cent of Russia’s banking sector,” she said when asked about potential elements of a sixth sanctions package.

The EU said it will allocate a further 50 million euros ($54 million) of humanitarian support for people affected

by the war in Ukraine, according to a Sunday statement by the bloc.

About 45 million euros will go to projects in Ukraine and 5 million to Moldova, a country of about 2.6 million people which has taken in over 420,000 refugees.

Itis working on ways for an oil embargo to be added to a forthcoming package of sanctions on Russia, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag.

At issue is that since oil is a globally traded commodity, “what shouldn’t happen is that Putin charges even higher prices in other markets for supplies that otherwise go to the EU,” von der Leyen said.

Russia continues to pound Mariupol, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, amid Moscow’s window for troops in the besieged city to surrender.