Kyiv says ‘no question’ of surrender in Mariupol as it defies Russia’s deadline

Ukraine has defied an ultimatum by the Russian military for its forces to surrender the city of Mariupol, as shelling continued in Kyiv and US president Joe Biden announced that he would visit Ukraine’s western neighbour Poland this week.

Despite Mariupol being besieged by Russian forces for almost four weeks, the Ukrainian government in Kyiv gave short shrift to Moscow’s demand for the city’s defenders to “lay down arms” by 5am Moscow time (2amGMT) on Monday.

Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that there could be no question of surrender.

“There can be no talk of any surrenders, laying down of arms. We have already informed the Russian side about this,” she said, according to online news site Ukrainska Pravda. “Instead of wasting time on eight pages of letters, just open a [humanitarian] corridor.”

In a briefing on Sunday night, Col-Gen Mikhail Mizintsev, the director of the Russian national defence management centre, said: “A terrible humanitarian catastrophe has developed. All who lay down their arms are guaranteed safe passage out of Mariupol.”

Mizintsev said humanitarian corridors for civilians would be opened eastwards and westwards out of Mariupol at 10am Moscow time (7am GMT) on Monday.

Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for the failure to open such corridors in recent weeks. Mizintsev, without providing evidence, said that Ukrainian “bandits”, “neo-Nazis” and nationalists had engaged in “mass terror” and gone on a killing spree in the city.

The deadline to surrender came and went on Monday morning without any further comment from the Russian side.

Mariupol has suffered some of the heaviest bombardment since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February. Many of its 400,000 residents remain trapped in the city with little, if any, food, water or power.

The Mariupol city council has claimed that several thousand residents have been “deported” to Russia over the past week. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people, displaced more than 10 million and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the US.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy told CNN on Sunday that a failure to end the war by negotiations could lead to “world war three”, and he will be hoping that this week’s Nato summit in Brussels will provide him with more support.

Biden will fly to Europe for the summit with Nato allies, G7 leaders and European Union leaders to discuss international efforts to support Ukraine after Russia’s invasion.

He will then travel to Poland – a Nato member with a large border with Ukraine – on Friday to discuss the international response to Russia’s invasion that has sparked a “humanitarian and human rights crisis”, the White House said on late Sunday. He will meet Polish president Andrzej Duda in Warsaw. Over 2 million refugees have entered Poland from Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on 24 February, the Polish border guard said on Friday.