The city has been facing a humanitarian catastrophe for weeks, as Russian tanks move toward the center, demolishing neighborhoods along the way. The number of civilians killed in the siege is unknown. The Ukrainian-controlled council has accused Russian soldiers of collecting corpses and cremated them in a mobile crematorium. On Saturday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the situation in the city as “inhumane” and accused Russia of “deliberately trying to destroy everyone” there. Volodymyr Zelenskiy: the situation in Mariupol is “inhuman” – video In a possible admission that Russia was close to occupying the city, he said Ukrainian troops controlled only a small part of Mariupol and encountered much larger Russian numbers. The situation was “very difficult” in Mariupol, Zelensky told the Ukrayinska Pravda news portal. “Our soldiers are out. the injured are excluded. “There is a humanitarian crisis. Nevertheless, the children are defending themselves.” Failing to overcome Ukrainian resistance in the north, the Russian military has re-focused its ground offensive in the eastern Donbass region, while maintaining long-distance raids elsewhere, including in the capital, Kiev. Russia has given the remaining Ukrainian troops a deadline of 6 p.m. Moscow time (3 am GMT) to lay down their arms and evacuation deadline at 13:00 (10 am GMT), which passed without any sign of compliance by Ukrainian fighters hiding in the silenced Azovstal steelworks. The steelworks, one of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe with a maze of railway tracks and blast furnaces, has become the last stop for the defenders. A spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, General Igor Konashenkov, said the Russian military had learned from intercepted communications that the Ukrainian military had barred its troops from surrendering. “Anyone who continues the resistance will be destroyed,” Konashenkov said. The city has experienced some of the fiercest fighting and worst civilian suffering since the February 24 invasion, with corpses sweeping damaged streets and thousands chasing under horrific conditions underground. The fall of Mariupol, the largest trading port in the Sea of Azov from which Ukraine exports grain, iron and steel and heavy machinery, would be an economic blow to Ukraine and a symbolic and strategic victory for Russia, linking its territory. in Donbas with the Crimean region annexed in 2014. Zelensky said that if Russian forces killed the remaining Kiev troops to defend the city, then a new negotiation process to end almost two months of fighting would end. “Destroying all our guys in Mariupol – what they are doing now – can put an end to any form of negotiation,” he said. Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, said the city was on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe and warned that the country was gathering evidence of alleged Russian atrocities there. “We will deliver everything to The Hague. “There will be no impunity,” he said. Ukrainian authorities have urged people in Donbass to move west to escape a large-scale Russian offensive to seize Donetsk and Luhansk. Elsewhere in Ukraine, there were more reports Sunday of sporadic Russian strikes around major popular centers following the humiliating loss of the Russian warship Moskva in the Black Sea last week. The mayor of the city of Brovary, near Kyiv, said a rocket attack had damaged infrastructure. Russia says it has destroyed an ammunition factory near the capital, according to the RIA Novosti news agency. It was the third attack in so many days on targets around Kyiv: on Friday, Russian forces destroyed a factory that allegedly produced one of the missiles used to sink Moskva, and on Saturday, Russian missiles reportedly hit a factory. hardware in the capital. Darnytskyi area. In the northeast, Russian artillery pounded several neighborhoods in Kharkov, Ukraine’s second largest city. The city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said three people had been killed and 34 injured in raids on Saturday. Despite the desperate situation in Mariupol, Ukraine has said it is holding back Russian forces in other parts of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. On Sunday, Ukrainian police in Donetsk said that in the past 24 hours, Russian forces had opened fire from tanks, multiple rocket launchers and heavy artillery in 13 Ukrainian-controlled settlements, killing two civilians.