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Russia pressures Mariupol as it focuses on Ukraine’s east

Russian forces have intensified their attacks along a boomerang-shaped front hundreds of miles long in what is known as the Donbas.

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Russian forces have tightened the noose around diehard Ukrainian defenders holed up at a Mariupol steel plant amid desperate new efforts to open an evacuation corridor for trapped civilians in the ruined city, a key battleground in Moscow’s drive to seize the country’s industrial east.

As the holdouts came under punishing new attacks, the Kremlin said it had submitted a draft of its demands for ending the fighting, the number of people fleeing the country climbed past five million, and the West raced to supply Ukraine with heavier weapons for the potentially grinding new phase of the war.

With global tensions running high, the Kremlin reported the first successful test launch of a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile, the Sarmat, that President Vladimir Putin boasted can overcome any missile defence system and make those who threaten Russia “think twice”.

It was launched in northern Russia.

Russia said it launched hundreds of missile and air attacks on Ukrainian targets, including concentrations of troops and vehicles.

The Kremlin’s stated goal is to capture the Donbas, the mostly Russian-speaking eastern region that is home to coal mines, metal plants and heavy-equipment factories vital to Ukraine’s economy.

Detaching it would give Russian President Vladimir Putin a badly needed victory two months into the war.

Russian invasion of Ukraine
(PA Graphics)

With that potentially pivotal offensive under way, Russia said it has presented Ukraine with a draft document outlining its demands as part of talks aimed at ending the conflict – days after Mr Putin said the negotiations were at a “dead end”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “the ball is in (the Ukrainians’) court, we’re waiting for a response”.

A serviceman stands next to the Illich Iron & Steel Works Metallurgical Plant, the second largest metallurgical enterprise in Ukraine, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine
A serviceman stands next to the Illich Iron & Steel Works Metallurgical Plant in Mariupol (Alexei Alexandrov/AP)

A Ukrainian presidential adviser said Kyiv was reviewing the proposals.

Moscow has long demanded, among other things, that Ukraine drop any bid to join Nato.

Ukraine has expressed a willingness to abandon the notion of Nato membership in return for security guarantees from a number of other countries.

A man with a dog walks in a street along damaged during a heavy fighting apartment buildings in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine
A man with a dog walks in a street in Mariupol (Alexei Alexandrov/AP)

The reports could not be independently confirmed.

Serhiy Taruta, the former governor of the Donetsk region and a Mariupol native, said 300 people, including wounded troops and civilians with children, were sheltered at the hospital.

Deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk, meanwhile, said there was a preliminary agreement to open a humanitarian corridor for women, children and the elderly to leave Mariupol and head west to the Ukraine-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday afternoon.

Mariupol mayor Vadym Boychenko urged residents to leave, though previous such agreements have fallen apart, with Russians shelling escape routes or otherwise preventing buses meant to pick up evacuees from entering the city.

A damaged boat of the Ukrainian Coast Guard of the Sea of Azov is seen after heavy fighting in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine
A damaged boat of the Ukrainian Coast Guard (Alexei Alexandrov/AP)

“Do not be frightened and evacuate to Zaporizhzhia, where you can receive all the help you need – food, medicine, essentials – and the main thing is that you will be in safety,” the mayor said in a statement.

A few thousand Ukrainian troops, by the Russians’ estimate, remained holed up in the steel plant.

The Russian side issued a new ultimatum to the defenders to surrender on Wednesday, but the Ukrainians have ignored previous demands to leave the plant’s labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers.

Mariupol holds strategic and symbolic value for both sides.

Servicemen of Donetsk People’s Republic militia walk past damaged apartment buildings near the Illich Iron & Steel Works Metallurgical Plant, the second largest metallurgical enterprise in Ukraine, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine
Servicemen walk past damaged apartment buildings near the Illich Iron & Steel Works Metallurgical Plant (Alexei Alexandrov/AP)

Mariupol’s fall would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up Russian troops to move elsewhere in the Donbas.

Witness accounts and reports from officials have given a broad picture of the extent of the Russian advance.

But independent reporting in the parts of the Donbas held by Russian forces and separatists is severely limited, making it difficult to know what is happening in many places on the ground.

A serviceman of Donetsk People’s Republic militia walks past damaged during a heavy fighting mosque in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine
A serviceman of the Donetsk People’s Republic militia walks past a damaged mosque in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol (Alexei Alexandrov/AP)

US President Joe Biden is expected to announce a new weapons package in the coming days that will include additional artillery and ammunition, and Canada and the Netherlands also said they would send more heavy weapons.

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