Russian forces pushed deeper into Ukraine's besieged and battered port city of Mariupol on Saturday, where heavy fighting shut down a major steel plant and local authorities pleaded for more Western help.
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The fall of Mariupol, the scene of some of the war's worst suffering, would mark a major battlefield advance for the Russians, who are largely bogged down outside major cities more than three weeks into the biggest land invasion in Europe since World War II.
"Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the earth," Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said from a rubble-strewn street in a video addressed to Western leaders that was authenticated by The Associated Press.
Details also began to emerge Saturday about a rocket attack that killed as many as 40 marines in the southern city of Mykolaiv the previous day, according to a Ukrainian military official who spoke to The New York Times.
Russian forces have already cut Mariupol off from the Sea of Azov, and its fall would link Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, to eastern territories controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. It would mark a rare advance in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance that has dashed Russia's hopes for a quick victory and galvanized the West.
Ukrainian and Russian forces battled over the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, said. "One of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe is actually being destroyed," Denysenko said in televised remarks.
The Mariupol city council claimed hours later that Russian soldiers had forcibly relocated several thousand city residents, mostly women and children, to Russia. It didn't say where, and AP could not immediately confirm the claim.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the nearest forces that could assist Mariupol were already struggling against "the overwhelming force of the enemy" and that "there is currently no military solution to Mariupol."
Zelenskyy said early Sunday that the siege of Mariupol would go down in history for what he said were war crimes committed by Russian troops.
"To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come," he said in a video address to the nation.
Despite the siege in Mariupol, many remained struck by Ukraine's ability to hold back its much bigger, better-armed foe. The United Kingdom's Defense Ministry said Ukraine's airspace continued to be effectively defended.
"Gaining control of the air was one of Russia's principal objectives for the opening days of the conflict and their continued failure to do so has significantly blunted their operational progress," the ministry said on Twitter.
In Mykolaiv, rescuers searched the rubble of the marine barracks that was destroyed in an apparent missile attack Friday. The region's governor said the marines were asleep when the attack happened.
It wasn't clear how many marines were inside at the time, and rescuers were still searching the rubble for survivors the following day. But a senior Ukrainian military official, who spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity to reveal sensitive information, estimated that as many as 40 marines were killed, which would make it one of the deadliest known attacks on Ukrainian forces during the war.
Estimates of Russian deaths vary widely, but even conservative figures are in the low thousands. Russia had 64 deaths in five days of fighting during its 2008 war with Georgia. It lost about 15,000 in Afghanistan over 10 years, and more than 11,000 in years of fighting in Chechnya.
The Russian military said Saturday that it used its latest hypersonic missile for the first time in combat. Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Kinzhal missiles destroyed an underground warehouse storing Ukrainian missiles and aviation ammunition in the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk.
Russia has said the Kinzhal, carried by MiG-31 fighter jets, has a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (about 1,250 miles) and flies at 10 times the speed of sound.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the US couldn't confirm the use of a hypersonic missile.
UN bodies have confirmed more than 847 civilian deaths since the war began, though they concede the actual toll is likely much higher. The UN says more than 3.3 million people have fled Ukraine as refugees.
Ukraine and Russia have held several rounds of negotiations aimed at ending the conflict but remain divided over several issues, with Moscow pressing for its neighbor's demilitarization and Kyiv demanding security guarantees.
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone Saturday for a second time this week with Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel. The Kremlin said Putin "outlined fundamental assessments of the course of the talks between Russian and Ukrainian representatives," while Bettel informed him about "contacts with the leadership of Ukraine and other countries."
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss accused Putin of using the talks as a "smokescreen" while his forces regroup. "We don't see any serious withdrawal of Russian troops or any serious proposals on the table," she told the Times of London.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, during a Saturday visit to NATO ally Bulgaria, said the Russian invasion had "stalled on a number of fronts" but the US had not yet seen signs that Putin was deploying additional forces.
However, despite all the determination of Ukraine's people, all the losses among Russia's forces and all the errors of Kremlin leaders, there is no sign that the war will soon be over. Even if Putin fails to take control of his neighbor, he can keep up the punishing attacks on its cities and people. Ukraine's president said Russia is trying to starve Ukraine's cities into submission and that Putin is deliberately creating "a humanitarian catastrophe."
"His instinct will be always to double down because he's got himself into a dreadful mess, a huge strategic blunder," said Michael Clarke, former head of the British-based Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank.
"And I don't think it's in his character to try to retrieve that, except by carrying on, going forward," he said.
Other Russian options remain possible, including a negotiated settlement. Moscow is demanding that Ukraine formally embrace neutrality, thus swearing off any alliance with NATO, and recognize the independence of the separatist regions in the east and Russian sovereignty over Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Russia's other options include an unrelenting air campaign in which it bombs and depopulates cities as it did in Chechnya and Syria. US officials also warn of the risk of Russian chemical attacks, and the threat of escalation to nuclear war.
"Unless the Russians intend to be completely genocidal – they could flatten all the major cities, and Ukrainians will rise up against Russian occupation – there will be just constant guerrilla war" if Russian troops remain, Clarke said.
Indeed, Zelenskyy called on Saturday for comprehensive peace talks with Moscow and also urged Switzerland to do more to crack down on Russian oligarchs who he said were helping wage war on his country with their money.
British intelligence warned that Russia, frustrated by its failure to achieve its objectives since it launched the invasion on Feb. 24, was now pursuing a strategy of attrition that could exacerbate the humanitarian crisis.
Ukrainian cities "are being destroyed on the orders of people who live in European, in beautiful Swiss towns, who enjoy property in your cities. It would really be good to strip them of this privilege," Zelenskyy said in an audio address.
Neutral Switzerland, which is not a member of the European Union, has fully adopted EU sanctions against Russian individuals and entities, including orders to freeze their wealth in Swiss banks.
The EU measures are part of a wider sanctions effort by Western nations, criticized by China, aimed at squeezing Russia's economy and starving its war machine.
In an address earlier on Saturday, Zelenskyy urged Moscow to hold peace talks now.
"I want everyone to hear me now, especially in Moscow. The time has come for a meeting, it is time to talk," he said in a video address. "The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia's losses will be such that it will take you several generations to recover."
Putin, who calls the action a "special operation" aimed at demilitarizing Ukraine and purging it of what he sees as dangerous nationalists, told a rally on Friday in Moscow that all the Kremlin's aims would be achieved.
More than 3.3 million refugees have fled Ukraine through its western border, with around 2 more million displaced inside the country. Ukraine has evacuated 190,000 civilians from front-line areas via humanitarian corridors, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Saturday.
Interfax quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying Moscow expected its operation in Ukraine to end with a signing of a comprehensive agreement on security issues, including Ukraine's neutral status.
China has not condemned Russia's invasion, though it has expressed concern about the war.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said on Saturday that Western sanctions against Russia were getting "more and more outrageous."
Meanwhile, close Kremlin ally Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with the Japanese television channel TBS that Putin is healthy, sane and "in better shape than ever."
"He and I haven't only met as heads of state, we're on friendly terms," Lukashenko said in a recording of the interview shared by state news agency BelTA. "I'm absolutely privy to all his details, as far as possible, both state and personal."
Russia used Belarusian territory as a staging post for its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Western leaders have suggested Putin made a costly miscalculation by launching the military assault on Ukraine, where Russian forces have taken heavy losses and their advance has largely stalled despite their apparent superiority.
Johnson has suggested Putin is being "irrational" and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has described him as "totally paranoid."
But Lukashenko dismissed the notion that Putin, who is 69, was not at the height of his powers.
"The West … should get this stupidity, this fiction out of your heads," he told the interviewer.
"Putin is absolutely fit, he's in better shape than ever ... This is a completely sane, healthy person, physically healthy – he's an athlete."
Lukashenko also bemoaned the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. The theme is one Putin has frequently discussed, not least when he suggested in speeches before the invasion that Ukraine was an artificial construct and an "inalienable part" of Russian history and culture.
"The collapse of the Soviet Union is a tragedy," Lukashenko said. "If the Soviet Union had survived to this day, we could have avoided all sorts of conflicts in the world...
"While the USSR existed, the world was multipolar and one pole balanced the other," he said. "Now the reason for what's happening in the world is unipolarity – the monopolization of our planet by the United States of America."
Also on Saturday, Russia's space agency dismissed Western media reports suggesting Russian cosmonauts joining the International Space Station (ISS) had chosen to wear yellow suits with blue trim in support of Ukraine.
"Sometimes yellow is just yellow," Roscosmos's press service said on its Telegram channel.
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"The flight suits of the new crew are made in the colors of the emblem of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three cosmonauts graduated from ... To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy."
Roscosmos Director-General Dmitry Rogozin was more acerbic, saying on his personal Telegram channel that Russian cosmonauts had no sympathy for Ukrainian nationalists.
In a live-streamed news conference from the ISS on Friday, veteran cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, the mission commander, was asked about the suits.
"Every crew picks a color that looks different. It was our turn to pick a color," he said. "The truth is, we had accumulated a lot of yellow fabric, so we needed to use it up. That's why we had to wear yellow flight suits."
On Saturday evening, he was quoted on Roscosmos's Telegram channel as saying the suits had been made six months ago, and that the three cosmonauts had chosen the colors of their alma mater.
"Color is just color. It has nothing to do with Ukraine," he said. "In these days, even though we are in space, we are together with our president and people!"
