Some women and children have been evacuated from a steel plant that is the last defensive stronghold in the bombed-out ruins of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, while US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Ukraine's president in the country's capital in a show of American support.
Russia's high-stakes offensive in coastal southern Ukraine and the country’s eastern industrial heartland has Ukrainian forces fighting village by village and more civilians fleeing airstrikes and artillery shelling as the war draws near their doorsteps.
