At least 7 dead in missile strikes in western city of Lyiv, Ukrainian officials say.  Shelling in eastern city of Kharkiv kills at least 3, journalists on scene report.  Ukrainian forces hold on to steel mill in Mariupol despite Russian demands to surrender.  Ukraine says Russian attacks force halt to civilian evacuations for 2nd day.  What questions do you have about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Send an email to [email protected]

Russian forces launched missile attacks on the western city of Lviv and pounded a multitude of other targets across Ukraine on Monday in what appeared to be an intensified bid to grind down the country’s defences ahead of an all-out assault on the east. At least seven people were reported killed in Lviv, where plumes of thick black smoke rose over a city that has seen only sporadic attacks during almost two months of war and has become a haven for large numbers of civilians fleeing intense fighting elsewhere. To the Kremlin’s increasing anger, Lviv has also become a major conduit for NATO-supplied weapons and for foreign fighters joining the Ukrainian cause. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, meanwhile, vowed to “fight absolutely to the end” in strategically vital Mariupol, where the last known pocket of resistance in the seven-week siege consisted of Ukrainian fighters holed up in a sprawling steel plant. The holdouts ignored a surrender-or-die ultimatum from the Russians on Sunday. People hug as they look at the destruction at a civilian building in Lviv, Ukraine, on Monday. At least seven people were killed in Russian missile strikes on the city, Ukrainian officials said. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The governor of the Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyy, said the Russian missile strikes hit three military infrastructure facilities and an auto mechanic shop. He said the wounded included a child, and emergency teams battled fires caused by the attack. Lviv is the biggest city and a major transportation hub in western Ukraine. It sits roughly 80 kilometres from Poland, a NATO member. Russia has strongly complained about the increasing flow of Western weapons to Ukraine, and last week its Foreign Ministry issued a formal note of protest to the U.S. and its allies. On Russian state media, some anchors have charged that the supplies amount to direct Western engagement in the fight against Russia.

‘Nightmare of war has caught up with us’

Lviv has also been seen as a relatively safe place for the elderly, mothers and children trying to escape the war. But a hotel sheltering Ukrainians who had fled fighting in other parts of the country was among the buildings badly damaged, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said. “The nightmare of war has caught up with us even in Lviv,” said Lyudmila Turchak, 47, who fled with two children from the eastern city of Kharkiv. “There is no longer anywhere in Ukraine where we can feel safe.” Firefighters battle a blaze after a civilian building was struck in Lviv, Ukraine, on Monday. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)Smoke is seen on the horizon after Russian missiles struck an area in Lviv on Monday. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
A powerful explosion also rocked Vasylkiv, a town south of the capital of Kyiv that is home to a military airbase, according to residents. It was not immediately clear what was hit. Military analysts say Russia is increasing its strikes on weapons factories, railways and other infrastructure targets across Ukraine to wear down the country’s ability to resist a major ground offensive in the Donbas, Ukraine’s Russian-speaking eastern industrial heartland. The Russian military said missiles struck more than 20 military targets in Eastern and central Ukraine in the past day, including ammunition depots, command headquarters and groups of troops and vehicles. It claimed its artillery hit an additional 315 Ukrainian targets, and warplanes conducted 108 strikes on Ukrainian troops and military equipment. The claims couldn’t be independently verified. Over the weekend, Russia also claimed to have destroyed Ukrainian air defence radar equipment. People take shelter after an air raid siren sounded in Lviv on Monday, following earlier airstrikes in the area. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Russia bent on capturing Donbas

Gen. Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British army, told Sky News the strikes were part of a “softening-up” campaign by Russia ahead of a planned ground offensive in the Donbas. Ukraine’s government halted civilian evacuations for a second day on Monday, saying Russian forces were shelling and blocking the humanitarian corridors. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukraine had been negotiating passage from cities and towns in eastern and southeastern Ukraine, including Mariupol and other areas in the Donbas. The government of the Luhansk region in the Donbas said four civilians trying to flee were shot dead by Russian forces. Vereshchuk said Russia could be prosecuted for war crimes over its refusal to allow civilians to leave Mariupol. “Your refusal to open these humanitarian corridors will in the future be a reason to prosecute all involved for war crimes,” she wrote on social media. The Russians, in turn, accused “neo-Nazi nationalists” in Mariupol of hampering the evacuation. Russia is bent on capturing the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists already control some territory, after its attempt to take the capital failed. A woman makes the sign of the cross as she participates in an Orthodox service celebrating Palm Sunday in the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Sunday. (Petros Giannakouris/The Associated Press)
“We are doing everything to ensure the defence” of Eastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address to the nation on Sunday. The looming offensive in the east, if successful, would give Russian President Vladimir Putin a badly needed victory to sell to the Russian people amid the war’s mounting casualties and the economic hardship caused by Western sanctions.

Mariupol a ‘shield defending Ukraine’

The capture of Mariupol is seen as a key step in preparations for any eastern offensive since it would free Russian troops up. The fall of the city on the Sea of Azov would hand Russia its biggest military victory of the war, giving it full control of a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and depriving Ukraine of a major port and prized industrial assets. Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar has described Mariupol as a “shield defending Ukraine.” The city has been reduced to rubble in the siege, but a few thousand fighters, by Russia’s estimate, are holding on to the giant, 11-square-kilometre Azovstal steel mill. WATCH | Ukraine’s holdout in Mariupol buys time, says retired U.S. army general: 

Ukrainian holdout in Mariupol buys time, says retired U.S. army general

The longer Ukrainian soldiers can hold out in Mariupol, the more time they buy for the Donbas, says retired U.S. army general Peter Zwack. 10:07
“We will fight absolutely to the end, to the win, in this war,” Shmyhal, Ukraine’s prime minister, vowed Sunday on ABC’s This Week. He said Ukraine is prepared to end the war through diplomacy if possible, “but we do not have intention to surrender.” Many Mariupol civilians, including children, are also sheltering at the Azovstal plant, Mikhail Vershinin, head of the city’s patrol police, told Mariupol television. An estimated 100,000 people remain in the city out of a prewar population of 450,000, trapped without food, water, heat or electricity. The relentless bombardment of Mariupol — including on a maternity hospital and a theatre where civilians were sheltering — along with street fighting have killed at least 21,000 people, by Ukrainian estimates. People walk past the turret of a destroyed tank in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, on Sunday. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
A pro-Russian Ukrainian politician who was arrested last week on a treason charge appeared in a video offering himself in exchange for the evacuation of Mariupol’s trapped civilians. Ukraine’s state security services posted the video of Viktor Medvedchuk, the former leader of a pro-Russian opposition party with personal ties to Putin. It was not clear whether Medvedchuk was speaking under duress.

Putin says sanctions have failed

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, was also hit by shelling Monday that killed at least three people, according to Associated Press journalists on the scene. One of the dead was a woman who appeared to be going out to collect water in the rain. She was found lying bloodied with a water canister and umbrella by her side. A man surveys the damage after a Russian artillery strike hit a residential building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Monday. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
The day before, at least five people were killed by Russian shelling in Kharkiv, regional officials said. Zelensky called Sunday’s bombing in Kharkiv “nothing but deliberate terror.” Putin on Monday repeated his insistence that the Western sanctions “blitz” against Russia had failed. The Russian leader said the West had not managed to “upset the financial-economic situation, provoke panic in the markets, the collapse of the banking system and shortages in stores,” though he acknowledged a sharp hike in consumer prices in Russia, saying they had risen by 17.5 per cent as of April. Meanwhile, Zelensky submitted a filled-out questionnaire in the first step toward obtaining accelerated membership in the European Union — a desire that has been a source of irritation to Russia for years. Zelensky, though, has offered to drop any effort to join NATO, one of the Kremlin’s key demands.