A Russian ultimatum for Ukrainian defenders holed up in an industrial complex in the besieged port city of Mariupol to surrender has passed with no signs of movement by either side as Moscow steps up its assault on Ukraine’s eastern regions amid Western pledges of more military aid and further sanctions.
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Russia’s attempts to capture the Sea of Azov port have been met with stubborn resistance by the Ukrainian defenders, despite waves of devastating shelling that have turned most of the city into a wasteland and killed thousands of civilians while trapping tens of thousands more among the ruins.
But shortly before a 2 p.m. April 20 deadline, Russia-backed separatists said that only five people had surrendered.
The fall of Mariupol would be a strategic prize and huge morale boost for Moscow, helping to link territory held by Russia-backed separatists in the east with the Crimea region that Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
The Ukrainian military said earlier on April 20 that Russian forces continuing their assault on the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, where Ukrainian troops and civilians are said to be holding out.
A Ukrainian commander in the Azovstal plant issued a desperate plea for help, saying his marines are “maybe facing our last days, if not hours.”
“The enemy is outnumbering us 10-to-1,” said Serhiy Volyna from the 36th Separate Marine Brigade.
One of the victims of the intense battle was 91-year-old Vanda Obyedkova, who 81 years earlier had survived the Nazi invasion of Mariupol.
The Chabad.org media website said on April 19 that Obyedkova had died 15 days earlier as she succumbed to a lack of water and basic necessities while hiding in a basement in Mariupol waiting for the fighting to end.
“Mama didn’t deserve such a death,” her daughter Larissa, who risked her own life to bury her mother in a nearby park less than a kilometer from the sea, told the news outlet.
WATCH: Ukrainian soldiers have dug in and are bracing for battle in the eastern Luhansk region as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russian forces have launched their offensive in the Donbas. RFE/RL reporter Maryan Kushnir visited the Ukrainian trenches outside the town of Kreminna on April 18.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Kyiv had reached a preliminary agreement with Russia on creating a humanitarian corridor to evacuate women, children, and the elderly from Mariupol on April 20.
“Given the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Mariupol, this is where we will focus our efforts today,” she said on social media.
Vereshchuk said the evacuation attempt would start at 2 p.m. local time. It was not immediately clear whether Russia made opening the humanitarian corridor contingent on the surrender of Ukrainian defenders in the city.
A group of Russian activist and artists called for a cease-fire before Orthodox Easter. Human rights activist Zoya Svetova, philosopher Mikhail Epshtein, and actor and director Aleksandr Feklistov are among those who signed an open letter published by Novaya gazeta’s European edition.
The appeal ask for a cease-fire at least until Orthodox Easter on April 24.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces have repulsed 10 attacks by Russian forces in Donetsk and Luhansk over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian military said.
On the diplomatic front, European Council President Charles Michel arrived in Kyiv on April 20 in a show of support for Ukraine.
“In Kyiv today,” Michel tweeted under a photograph of him at a train station. “In the heart of a free and democratic Europe.”
A recent retreat by Russian forces from towns such as Bucha and Borodyanka have revealed harrowing evidence of brutal killings, torture, mass graves, and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians in the fighting, which Michel said would be met with justice.
“Like Bucha and too many other towns in #Ukraine. History will not forget the war crimes that have been committed here. There can be no peace without justice,” Michel tweeted after touring the devastated town of Borodyanka.
Kyiv and Moscow have not held face-to-face peace talks since March 29. Each side blames the other for the breakdown in negotiations, raising fears of a prolonged war.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call on April 20 that Moscow had put forward its demands in a document handed over to Ukrainian officials, but gave no details, saying only that “we’re waiting for a response.”
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said the proposal was being reviewed but also noted that it is difficult to say when the next face-to-face round of negotiations will be possible because the Russians are seriously betting on the so-called “second stage of the special operation.”
After failing to seize Kyiv and other large and strategic cities in its nearly eight-week war, Moscow now says its aim is to capture the full provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, which have been the focus of Russia-backed separatists since 2014.
Russia said on April 20 that it had conducted the first test-launch of its Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, a new addition to its nuclear arsenal.
President Vladimir Putin was shown on television being told by military officials that the missile had been launched from Plesetsk in the northwest and had hit targets on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Far East.
Putin called the missile “truly unique” and said it would “strengthen the combat potential of our armed forces, reliably ensure Russia’s security from external threats, and provide food for thought for those who, in the heat of frenzied aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country.”
The Sarmat has been under development for years and so the test is not a surprise for the West, but it comes with tensions high over the war.
Russia properly notified the United States ahead of its launch, the Pentagon said, adding that it saw the test as routine and not a threat to the United States.
