Besieged City Of Mariupol: 1,000 Ukrainian troops surrender

More than 1,000 Ukrainian marines have surrendered in the port of Mariupol, Russia's defence ministry said of its main strategic target in the eastern Donbas region, which has been reduced to ruins but is not yet under Russian control.

If the Russians take the Azovstal industrial district, where the marines have been holed up, they would be in full control of Mariupol, Ukraine's main Sea of Azov port, allowing Russia to reinforce a land corridor between separatist-held eastern areas and the Crimea region that it seized and annexed in 2014.

Surrounded and bombarded by Russian troops for weeks and the focus of some of the fiercest fighting of the war, Mariupol would be the first major city to fall since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Russia's defence ministry said yesterday that 1,026 marines had surrendered, including 162 officers.

Ukraine's general staff said Russian forces were proceeding with attacks on Azovstal and the port, but a defence ministry spokesman said he had no information about any surrender.

US President Joe Biden said for the first time that Moscow's invasion of Ukraine amounted to genocide, a term denounced by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, reports Reuters.

Meanwhile, presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia arrived in Kyiv to meet Zelenskiy, the Polish leader's office said. Estonian President Alar Karis had earlier tweeted that they were offering political support and military aid.

Moscow's incursion into Ukraine, the biggest attack on a European state since 1945, has seen more than 4.6 million people flee abroad, killed or wounded thousands and left Russia increasingly isolated on the world stage.