Russia has unleashed rockets on an encircled steel works in Mariupol, Ukraine’s last redoubt in the port city, after a UN-brokered ceasefire broke down with some civilians still trapped beneath the sprawling site.
More than 200 civilians remain in the plant, according to Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko, with 100,000 civilians still in a city devastated by weeks of Russian siege and shelling.
Weary-looking people, including children and the elderly, clambered off buses after escaping the ruins of their home town in southeast Ukraine where Russia now claims control.
“We had said goodbye to life. We didn’t think anyone knew we were there,” said Valentina Sytnykova, 70, who said she sheltered in the plant for two months with her son and 10-year-old granddaughter.
Fresh Russian attacks in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region killed 21 civilians and injured 27 on Tuesday, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
He said the figure, which included 10 dead at a coking plant in the town of Avdiivka reported earlier, was the highest daily death toll in the region since an attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk last month that killed more than 50 people.
Russia has turned its heaviest firepower on Ukraine’s east and south after failing to take Kyiv, the capital, in a drive to limit Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea, vital for its grain and metal exports
Moscow has also struck targets much further west to disrupt supplies of Western military aid.
On Tuesday, Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had struck a military airfield near the port of Odessa with missiles destroying drones and ammunition supplied to Ukraine.
Ukraine said three missiles targeted the Odessa region and all were intercepted.
Andriy Sadoviy, the mayor of Lviv, a western city near the Polish border, said late on Tuesday air strikes had damaged power stations, cutting off electricity in some districts.
Nearly 10 weeks into a war that has killed thousands, destroyed cities and driven five million Ukrainians to flee abroad, Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the economic stakes for Kyiv’s Western backers on Tuesday by announcing plans to block the export of vital Russian raw materials.
“If you don’t stand up to dictators, history has shown us, they keep coming, they keep coming,” US President Joe Biden told assembly line workers at a Lockheed Martin plant in Alabama that produces the Javelin anti-tank missile, a weapon that has helped Ukraine fight Russia’s invasion.
The European Union said new sanctions on Russia would target its oil industry and banks, and that it also planned to phase out two-thirds of its Russian gas use by the end of 2022, part of efforts to deplete Moscow’s war chest.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced an additional Stg 300 million ($A528 million) in aid, and told Ukrainian politicians by video link it was “Ukraine’s finest hour”, echoing the famous words of then-leader Winston’s Churchill during World War II.
French President Emmanuel Macron urged Putin in a phone call on Tuesday to order an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and to lift Russia’s embargo on Ukrainian exports via the Black Sea.
Putin said Russia remained open to dialogue, the Kremlin said.
Zelenskiy put the cost of war damage in Ukraine so far at about $US600 billion ($A845 billion).
He urged foreign companies to pull out of the Russian market because not doing so “means you are directly supporting that war machine”.
Pummelled by Western sanctions, Russia’s own $US1.8 trillion ($A2.5 trillion) economy is heading for its biggest contraction since the years following the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.
In a Telegram video from the Mariupol steel plant, Captain Sviatoslav Palamar of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment said Russia had pounded Azovstal through the night.
“As of this moment, a powerful assault on the territory of the Azovstal plant is under way with the support of armoured vehicles, tanks, attempts to land on boats and a large number of infantry,” Palamar said.
Reuters could not independently verify his account. However, images on Monday showed volleys of rockets fired from a Russian truck-mounted launcher towards Azovstal.
