“We had said goodbye to life. We didn’t think anyone knew we were there,” said Valentina Sytnykova, 70, who said she sheltered in the plant for two months with her son and 10-year-old granddaughter.

Russia is targeting Mariupol as it seeks to cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea and connect Russian-controlled territory in the south and east. Parts of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk were held by Russian-backed separatists before President Vladimir Putin launched the February 24 invasion.

More than 200 civilians remain in the plant, according to Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko, with 100,000 civilians still in the city.

“Where am I to go? Let them blow me up here,” a 67-year-old woman told Reuters in the city, as she boiled water on an open fire amid the rubble of a destroyed apartment block.

Russia showed no signs of backing down nearly 10 weeks into what it calls a “special military operation,” a war that has killed thousands, destroyed cities and driven 5 million Ukrainians to flee abroad. Russia’s own $US1.8 trillion economy is heading for its biggest contraction since the years following the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.

Putin raised the economic stakes for Kyiv’s Western backers by announcing plans to block exports of vital raw materials.

Railways bombed

Russian forces have turned their heaviest firepower on Ukraine’s east and south after failing to take Kyiv, the capital, in the opening weeks of the war.

But there were also new attacks in the west on Tuesday. The mayor of Lviv said Russian missile strikes had damaged electricity and water networks in the city near the Polish border, across which flow Western arms supplies for Ukraine’s military.

Russian forces also struck six railway stations in the centre and west of the country, the head of Ukraine’s railways, Olesksandr Kamyshin, said. There were no injuries to civilians, he added on Twitter.

In the east, Russian attacks in Donetsk on Tuesday killed 21 civilians and injured 27, regional Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

Attacks and shelling also intensified in Luhansk, with the most difficult area being Popasna, where it was impossible to organise evacuations, regional Governor Serhiy Haida said.

“There are no safe cities in Luhansk region,” he said on the Telegram messaging service.

In a daily update on the conflict zone, British military intelligence said Russia has deployed 22 battalion tactical groups near Ukraine’s eastern city of Izium in an effort to advance along the northern axis of the Donbas region, and added that it was likely that Russian forces intended to capture the cities of Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk.

Ukraine’s general staff said its forces had repelled an attempted Russian advance through Dovgenke, about 108 km east of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.

In the south, Russia said it had struck a military airfield near the Black Sea port of Odesa with missiles, destroying drones, weapons and ammunition supplied by the West. Ukraine said three missiles targeted the Odesa region and all were intercepted.

The assault on the Azovstal steelworks began almost two weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his military not to storm the plant to finish off the defenders but to seal it off. The first — and so far only — civilians to be evacuated from the shattered plant got out during a brief cease-fire over the weekend, in an operation overseen by the UN and the Red Cross.

Loading

AP

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.