Become A Strategic Area: Russia Bombards Mariupol City, Ukraine Gives Resistance

JAKARTA - The city of Mariupol has suffered some of the heaviest bombings since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. Many of its 400,000 residents remain trapped there with little food, water, and electricity.

Fighting continued inside the city on Sunday, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said, without elaborating. Ukraine showed resistance that was reluctant to give up Mariupol.

The Russian governor of Sevastopol, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, said on Sunday that Post Captain Andrei Paliy, deputy commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, had died fighting in Mariupol,

In response to this and the resistance in the city, Russia called on Ukrainian troops in Mariupol to lay down their arms, saying a "terrible humanitarian catastrophe" was underway.

Occupying Mariupol would help Russian forces secure a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Mariupol city council said on Telegram on Saturday that several thousand residents had been 'deported;' to Russia over the past week. Russian news agencies said buses had taken hundreds of people Moscow called refugees from Mariupol to Russia in recent days.

Russian troops bombed an art school on Saturday where 400 residents were sheltering, but the number of victims was not yet known, the Mariupol council said. Reuters could not independently verify the claims. Meanwhile, Russia denies targeting civilians.

On Saturday, President Zelenskiy called the siege of Mariupol a war crime and a "terror that will be remembered for centuries to come."

Separately, the Greek Consul General in Mariupol, the last EU diplomat to be evacuated from the city, said it joined the ranks of places known to have been destroyed in the war.

"What I saw, I hope no one has seen," he said.

Putin said Russia's "special operations" were aimed at disarming Ukraine and rooting out dangerous nationalists. Western countries have called it an aggressive war of choice and have imposed punitive sanctions aimed at crippling Russia's economy.

Ukraine and its Western backers say Russian ground forces have made little progress in the last week, concentrating instead on artillery and missile strikes.