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11 UKRAINE 21.4.2022 A Russian ultimatum to Ukrainian troops in Mariupol to surrender or die expired on Wednesday afternoon with no mass capitulation, but the com- mander of a unit believed to be holding out in the besieged city said his forces could survive just days or hours. ousands of Russian troops backed by artillery and rocket barrages were at- tempting to advance elsewhere in what Ukrainian officials call the Battle of the Donbas – a push by Moscow to seize two eastern provinces it claims on be- half of separatists. In a video, the commander of Ukraine's 36th Marine Brigade, one of the last units believed to be holding out in Mar- iupol, asked for international help to es- cape the siege. "is is our appeal to the world. It may be our last. We may have only a few days or hours left," said Major Serhiy Volyna in a video uploaded to Facebook. "e enemy units are dozens of times larg- er than ours, they have dominance in the air, in artillery, in ground troops, in equipment and in tanks." Volyna, who has said that women and children are trapped in cellars under the plant, spoke in front of a white brick wall in what sounded like a crowded room. Reuters could not verify where or when the video was filmed or who else might have been in the room. e United Nations said on Wednes- day the number of refugees who have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb 24 had surpassed five million. More than half are children. Russia's nearly eight-week-long in- vasion has failed to capture any of Ukraine's largest cities. Moscow was forced to retreat from northern Ukraine after an assault on Kyiv was repelled last month, but has poured troops back in for an assault on the east that began this week. In the ruins of Mariupol, site of the war's heaviest fighting and worst hu- manitarian catastrophe, Russia was hitting the last main Ukrainian strong- hold, the Azovstal steel plant, with bun- ker-buster bombs, Kyiv said. "e world watches the murder of children online and remains silent," presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter. Russia has been trying to take full control of Mariupol since the war's first days. Its capture would be a big strategic prize, linking territory held by pro-Rus- sian separatists in the east with the Crimea region that Moscow annexed in 2014. Russian-backed separatists said short- ly before a 2 p.m. Wednesday deadline that just five people had surrendered. e previous day, Russia said no one had responded to a similar surrender demand. Ukraine announced plans to send 90 buses to evacuate 6,000 civilians from Mariupol, saying it had reached a "pre- liminary agreement" with Russia on a safe corridor, for the first time in weeks. But none of those earlier agreements have actually succeeded on the ground, with Moscow blocking all convoys. Once a prosperous port of 400,000 people, Mariupol has been reduced to a blasted wasteland with corpses in the streets and residents confined to cellars. Ukrainian officials say tens of thousands of civilians have died there. Battle of Donbas e battle for the Donbas region, which includes the provinces Luhansk and Donetsk, could be decisive as Rus- sia searches for a victory to justify Pres- ident Vladimir Putin's Feb. 24 invasion. Putin accuses Ukraine of mistreating Russian-speakers in the Donbas, which Kyiv and its Western allies call a false- hood to justify an unprovoked land grab. Russian television showed Putin addressing a girl from Luhansk on Wednesday: "It was the tragedy that took place in the Donbas, including in the Lugansk People's Republic, that forced, simply forced Russia to launch this military operation, which everyone is well aware of today," he said. Peace talks have been stalled. e Kremlin accused Kyiv of delaying the talks and changing its positions. Kyiv accuses Moscow of blocking talks by refusing humanitarian ceasefires, espe- cially to relieve besieged Mariupol. British military intelligence said fight- ing in the Donbas was intensifying as Russian forces tried to break through Ukraine's lines, and that Russia was still building up forces on Ukraine's eastern border. Moscow is hoping its advantage in fire- power will give it more success against Ukrainian defenders than in the failed campaign against Kyiv, when its over- stretched supply lines were attacked by nimble small units. Within a day of launching the Don- bas offensive, Russian forces captured Kreminna, a frontline town of 18,000 people, on Tuesday. Ukraine's general staff said Russian forces had attempted an offensive near Kharkiv, the country's second biggest city, which is close to Russia's supply lines to Donbas. Inside Kharkiv, where at least four people were killed in missile strikes on Tuesday, the body of an elderly man lay face down near a park on a suburban street, a ribbon of blood running into the gutter. "He worked in security not far from here," a resident named Maksym told Reuters. "e shelling began and every- one fled. en we came out here, the old guy was already dead." Charles Michel, head of the European Council that groups the 27 EU member states, arrived in Kyiv as the latest Eu- ropean official to visit and demonstrate support. In the latest sign of Russia's interna- tional isolation, sports industry news site Sportico reported that Russian play- ers would be banned from the Wimble- don tennis tournament. e All England Lawn Tennis Club, which organizes the grand slam event, did not immediately respond to a re- quest for comment. Kremlin spokes- person Dmitry Peskov said: "To make sports people hostages of political in- trigue is unacceptable." Mariupol may only have a 'few days or hours left,' Ukraine commander says Residents sit on benches amid ruins in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol under the control of Russian military and pro-Russian separatists