Andriy Sadovyy, the mayor of Lviv, said there were “five targeted rocket attacks” in the city, a haven for people fleeing violence in the rest of the country. Maksym Kozytskyi, Lviv’s regional governor, said in a statement released Monday afternoon that seven people had been killed and 11 others injured in the attacks, including a child. He said Russia had fired four cruise missiles, which, according to preliminary reports, were believed to have been fired from the Caspian Sea region. The attacks came after Ukrainian officials claimed that civilians in Mariupol, including children, were taking refuge with the last group of fighters under a steel mill in the besieged city. About 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers remain, despite the Russian ultimatum to surrender. The Ukrainian security services (SBU) also released a video in which Viktor Medvedev, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the country, called for an exchange with Ukrainian forces and civilians trapped in Mariupol. The SBU said Medvedchuk, who escaped from house arrest on charges of high treason in February, was arrested last week as Russia’s security service, the FSB, tried to evacuate him to Transnistria, a pro-Russian separatist region Moldova. He added that about 120,000 civilians remained in Mariupol, where the 36th Kiev Marine Brigade and the supranationalist Azov Battalion were resisting the Russian siege. Shortly afterwards, Russian television showed a video of Shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin, two British fighters arrested in Mariupol, who asked UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to exchange them with Medvedchuk. The men said they were being treated well, but gave no further details on the conditions of their captivity. Mykhailo Vershynin, the head of the Mariupol patrol police, told the city’s television channel that the civilians had taken refuge in the Azovstal steel plant because “it is a hiding place that allows them to survive for a period of time” during heavy bombings. missiles and artillery of Russia. “According to my information, [in] in the territory of the Azovstal factory, there are really a large number of civilians. “Including women, children, the elderly and orphans,” he said. Smoke rises over the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, where civilians are sheltered alongside Ukrainian soldiers who are still fighting the Russians. © Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters Versinin also told the agency that Russian-backed separatist forces now controlling most of the port city were paying citizens for food to help remove debris, collect corpses and dig mass graves. Separately, two Ukrainian officials posted pictures of a little girl who said she lived in warehouses under the Azovstal plant, a Soviet-era facility with concrete and steel infrastructure that allowed Mariupol fighters to survive the heaviest bombing. “Meet Alisa, she is four years old. “Fifty days of her life were spent with her mother in a shelter on the ground of the Azovstal factory under 24-hour bombardment,” wrote Arsen Avakov, a former interior minister, in a Facebook post that included a video of a little girl saying she was sent from Mariupol. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, posted a photo of the same child on Twitter. Ukraine and Russia’s claims about the conflict could not be confirmed. Ukrainian Marines, soldiers, border guards and fighters of the Azov paramilitary group were among the fighters who remained in Mariupol. A senior Azov official who has been in contact with the militants told the Financial Times over the weekend that Ukrainian troops in the city were short of food, drinking water and medicine.

Moscow has also stepped up attacks elsewhere in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, where Putin’s troops are trying to gain ground after failing to take control of the capital, Kyiv, during the first phase of the war. Also Monday, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peshkov said peace talks with Ukraine were faltering, almost three weeks after the last meeting between the two sides in Istanbul. The conversations took place online last week. “Unfortunately, the Ukrainian side is not showing much consistency in what has been agreed,” Peshkov told reporters, according to Interfax. “But the military operation is ongoing.” Putin has given an honorary title to one of the units that Ukraine claims is responsible for war crimes. In a message to the 64th Motorized Rifle Brigade, Putin said the designation “Guard” was “a high honor and recognition of your worth.” [and] mass heroism]. ” Ukraine’s armed forces say the brigade was responsible for “mass killings and torture” in the town of Bucha, where it found hundreds of dead civilians when Russia withdrew earlier this month. Additional report by Max Seddon