With rockets hitting Lviv on Monday morning and Kharkov receiving more bombardment, Moscow is also pushing for a major victory in the southern city as it works to seize control of the Donbas and create a land corridor to the already annexed Crimea. But Ukraine has vowed to fight and defend the city, defying a Russian ultimatum on Sunday calling on remaining fighters inside the besieged Azovstal steel plant to lay down their arms and surrender. Ukrainian authorities have urged people in Donbas to move west to escape a large-scale Russian offensive to occupy the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. “Russian troops are preparing for an offensive operation in the east of our country in the near future. “They literally want to end and destroy Donbass,” Zelensky said in an afternoon statement, in which he also reiterated his call on foreign governments to send weapons to his troops. Mariupol has been a symbol of Ukraine’s unexpectedly fierce resistance since Russian troops invaded the former Soviet state on February 24. “The city has not fallen yet,” Prime Minister Dennis Smihal said on Sunday. “There are still our military forces, our soldiers. “So they will fight to the end,” he told ABC’s This Week. “We will not surrender.” While many major cities were under siege, he said, not one – with the exception of Hersonissos in the south – had fallen and more than 900 cities and towns had been recaptured. Following the refusal of the Ukrainian fighters to surrender Mariupol, the Russian troops reportedly closed the city for entry and exit on Monday and will issue “movement tickets” to those who remain, said an adviser to the mayor. Petro Andriushchenko made the claim in an update via the Telegram messaging app on Sunday, sharing a photo that appeared to show a group of people waiting to fold. The governor of Lugansk, Sergiy Gaiday, said next week would be “difficult”. “This may be the last time we have the opportunity to save you,” he wrote on Facebook. Russian forces continued to bombard the eastern part of Lugansk and two people were killed in the town of Zolote, Gaiday told Ukrainian media earlier in the day. Two people were killed and four were injured in attacks in the towns of Marinka and Novopol, west of Donetsk, regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko told the Telegram. An airstrike hit a weapons factory in the capital, Kyiv. Five rockets reportedly hit Lviv on Monday morning, according to the city’s mayor, adding that authorities were seeking more detailed information. In Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, at least five people were killed and 20 wounded in a series of raids 21 kilometers (13 miles) from the Russian border. Maxim Haustov, head of the Kharkiv region health department, confirmed the deaths after a series of strikes that journalists at the scene said had set fires across the city and tore roofs from buildings. “The whole house was shaking and shaking,” Svitlana Pellegina, 71, told AFP as she inspected her damaged apartment. “Everything here started to burn.” “I called the fire department. They said: “We are on our way, but we were also bombed.” In the meantime, Ukraine has completed a questionnaire that will be the starting point for the European Union to decide on its accession. “Today, I can say that the document has been completed by the Ukrainian side,” Ihor Zhovkva, deputy head of Zelenskiy’s office, told Ukrainian state television on Sunday. The European Commission should issue a recommendation on Ukraine ‘s compliance with the necessary accession criteria, he added. “We expect the recommendation … to be positive and then the ball will be in the side of the EU member states.” Zovva said Ukraine is expected to become a candidate country for EU membership in June during a scheduled European Council meeting. Residents of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine were called to evacuate immediately. The head of the military administration of the region, Sergei Gaidai, claimed that “the decision is yours”, but warned that the cemetery “is growing day by day”. “Next week can be difficult. [This] “It may be the last time we still have a chance to save you,” he said in a statement late Sunday. In the town of Kramatorsk, also to the east, Orthodoxy’s Sunday gave its residents some respite before the expected Russian attack. At the Svyato-Pokrovsky Orthodox Church, about 40 people – mostly women in colorful headscarves – attended the service. “It’s very hard and scary right now,” said one colleague as she arrived at the red-brick church, topped by four gleaming domes. A young mother, Nadia, said she refused to evacuate for fear of traveling alone with her two children and leaving her relatives in Kramatorsk. “We do not go to the basement every time there is one [bomb] siren. It is very stressful for them [the children],” he said. “We have our place in the basement just in case, but we prefer to stay at home if possible. We are lowering the lights. “ Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk urged Russian forces to allow people to leave the besieged Mariupol, saying that humanitarian corridors allowing civilians to escape would not be opened on Sunday, as they did not agree with the Moscow forces. The UN World Food Program says more than 100,000 civilians in Mariupol are on the brink of starvation and lack access to water and heating. Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, said the city was on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe, adding that there was evidence of alleged Russian atrocities there. “We will deliver everything to The Hague. “There will be no impunity.” The mayor of Bucha – a city near Kyiv where the discovery of dead civilians sparked international condemnation and war crimes charges – said Russian troops had raped men as well as women and children there. Zelensky said he had invited his French counterpart to visit Ukraine to see for himself evidence that Russian forces had committed “genocide” – a term in which President Emanuel Macron had avoided. “I spoke to him yesterday,” Zelensky told CNN in an interview recorded Friday but broadcast on Sunday. “I just told him I wanted him to understand that this is not a war, but nothing but genocide. I invited him to come when he had the chance. He will come to see and I am sure he will understand “. But Russia has warned the United States of “unforeseen consequences” if it sends its “most sensitive” weapons systems to Ukraine. The Ministry of Defense claimed on Saturday that it had shot down a Ukrainian transport plane in the Odessa region carrying weapons supplied by Western nations. On Sunday, spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Russian missiles had destroyed ammunition, fuel and lubricant depots in eastern Ukraine and 44 Ukrainian military installations, including command posts. He said Russian air defense systems had shot down two Ukrainian MiG-29s in the Kharkiv region and a drone near the town of Pavlograd.