Ukrainian soldiers refuse to surrender

THE battered port city of Mariupol appeared on the brink of falling to Russian forces yesterday, after seven weeks under siege, a development that would give Moscow a crucial success in Ukraine following Russia's failure to storm the capital and the loss of its Black Sea flagship.

The Russian military estimated that about 2,500 Ukrainian fighters holding out at a hulking steel plant with a warren of underground passageways provided the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol.

Russia gave a deadline for their surrender, saying those who put down their weapons were 'guaranteed to keep their lives, but the Ukrainians did not submit.

"All those who will continue resistance will be destroyed,” Maj Gen Igor Konashenkov, the Russian defence ministry's spokesman, said.

He said intercepted communications indicated there were about 400 foreign mercenaries with the Ukrainian troops at the Azovstal steel mill, a claim that could not be independently verified.