Ukraine: Russia gives besieged city fresh deadline to surrender

Russia has given a new ultimatum to Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol to surrender by midday on Wednesday.

Moscow said those who lay down their weapons will be allowed to live and given medical treatment, as it refocuses its invasion on the East on Ukraine.

There was no immediate response from Ukrainian troops, but they ignored a previous deadline, and have repeatedly vowed not to give up.

Russia accused of bombing hospital

Meanwhile, Russia has been accused of bombing an "improvised" hospital sheltering some 300 people in the devastated port city.

The deputy commander of the Azov regiment, who was among the troops remaining in Mariupol, said the Russian military dropped heavy bombs on the steel plant.

Russia believes a few thousand Ukrainian troops are holed up in the sprawling plant, which has become the last pocket of resistance in the port.

The reports could not be independently confirmed.

Other cities also facing deadly attacks

The eastern cities of Kharkiv and Karmatorsk also came under deadly attack, with Russia claiming it's also struck areas around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro in the west of the Donbas with missilies.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had "driven almost everyone and everything that is capable of fighting us against Ukraine".

In his nightly address, he said most of Moscow's combat-ready forces were now concentrated in Ukraine and just across the border in Russia.

Despite claims that they are hitting only military sites, the Russians continue to target residential areas and kill civilians, he said.

"The Russian army in this war is writing itself into world history forever as the most barbaric and inhuman army in the world," Mr Zelensky said.

Russia changes objectives

The Kremlin has declared its main goal was the capture of the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years.

It's after abandoning a push to take Ukraine's capital Kyiv.

It the Russians succeed, it means Ukraine would lose industrial assets concentrated in the Donbas, including mines, metal plants and heavy-equipment factories.

Military experts said the Russians' goal is to encircle Ukrainian troops from the north, south and east.

Key to the campaign is the capture of Mariupol, which would deprive Ukraine of a vital port and complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, seized from Ukraine in 2014.

It would also free up Russian troops to move elsewhere in the Donbas.

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