Ukraine on Monday defiantly rejected Moscow’s demand that soldiers defending the southern port city of Mariupol surrender at dawn in exchange for their lives as Russia intensified its attempts to bomb Kyiv into submission.
Nearly a month into the Vladimir Putin-ordered invasion of Ukraine, Russian soldiers have turned to blunter methods and upped their attacks on civilians in schools, churches, and shopping centers.
In the capital city of Kyiv, Russian shelling leveled a shopping center in the Podilskyi district, killing at least eight people and leaving behind a sea of rubble.
Firefighters were seen Monday morning trying to rescue people stuck beneath the debris. The force of the explosion shattered every window in the high-rise tower next to the shopping mall and twisted their metal frames, the BBC reported.
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A soldier at the scene said body parts littered the wreckage.
While Kyiv had been the target of Russian aggression for weeks, the “scope of the devastation around the mall was greater than anything” the New York Times said it had witnessed inside the city limits.
The fall of Kyiv has been Russia’s primary military objective, but Ukrainian forces have been able to push Putin’s soldiers back in several places. With the capital city seemingly out of artillery range, Russia has turned to rockets and bombs in its attempts to pulverize Kyiv and has targeted places with large numbers of civilians, including neighborhoods and the Retroville mall, which housed a theater, a fitness center, and multiple fast-food restaurants.
Russian forces also shelled a chemical plant in the northeastern part of the country, sending toxic ammonia leaking into the air, Ukrainian authorities said.
The leak was reported at 4:30 a.m. local time at the Sumykhimprom chemical plant in the suburbs of Sumy, Gov. Dmytro Zhyvytsky said, adding that a 3-mile radius around the plant was considered hazardous. Ammonia is potentially lethal in high concentrations. Low exposure could cause burning and respiratory tract problems.
On Monday, Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory agency said radiation monitors around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant have stopped working.
Chernobyl is the site of the world’s worst nuclear meltdown. The plant was seized by Russian forces on Feb. 24.
The agency also said there are no firefighters available in the region to protect forests tainted by decades of radioactivity and that as the weather warms, a combination of risks could lead to “significant deterioration” in the ability to control the spread of radiation — not just in the country’s borders but beyond in the weeks and months to come.
Over the weekend, Russian forces, which encircled Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, destroyed an art school housing 400 sheltering civilians, including children and the elderly.
“It is known that the building was destroyed, and peaceful people are still under the rubble,” the Mariupol City Council posted on Telegram.
“Fascist Russian troops continue the genocide of the Ukrainian people and civilians in Mariupol,” the message said. “Every war criminal will be held accountable for his crimes against humanity, against the people of Mariupol!”
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Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, said in his overnight address it was unclear how many casualties there were.
“They are under the rubble, and we don’t know how many of them have survived,” he said, vowing that his country would “shoot down the pilot who dropped that bomb.”
Russian Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev has offered two corridors for safety, one heading east toward Russia and the other west to other parts of Ukraine, in return for Mariupol’s complete surrender.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said authorities in Mariupol could face a military tribunal if they side with what they called “bandits,” RIA Novosti, the Russian state news agency, reported.
Ukraine rejected the offer well ahead of an early-morning deadline.
“There can be no talk of any surrender, laying down of arms,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said. “We have already informed the Russian side about this.”
The fall of Mariupol would allow Russian forces in southern and eastern Ukraine to unite.
In his overnight address, Zelensky also said that a relief convoy headed to a city near Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine had been hijacked by Russian forces and that authorities had lost contact with the people in it.
“Five drivers and one doctor. We will release them,” he said, suggesting they had been detained. “We will try again and again to deliver to our people what they need.”
Russia’s assault on Ukraine has forced more than 10 million people to leave their homes, the United Nations said Sunday.
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“The war in Ukraine is so devastating that 10 million have fled — either displaced inside the country, or as refugees abroad,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.
As the fighting continues, U.S. President Joe Biden will head to Europe to talk with the leaders of America’s closest allies, including France, Germany, Italy, and Britain. Later in the week, he will head to Brussels, where NATO will hold an emergency meeting on a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
