KYIV/MARIUPOL, Ukraine, April 16 (Reuters) – Russian airstrikes and missile strikes hit the Ukrainian capital kyiv and other major cities on Saturday as Moscow launched longer-range attacks after the sinking of the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet.

In the beleaguered port of Mariupol, scene of the war’s heaviest fighting and worst humanitarian catastrophe, Russian troops continued their advances, hoping to make up for their failure to capture kyiv by seizing their first grand prize of the war. .

“The situation is very difficult” in Mariupol, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the Ukrainska Pravda news portal. “Our soldiers are stranded, the wounded are stranded. There is a humanitarian crisis… Yet the guys are fighting back.”

Moscow said its fighter jets hit a tank repair plant in kyiv. An explosion was heard and smoke was seen in the southeastern district of Darnytskyi. The mayor said at least one person had died and doctors were battling to save others. Read more

The Ukrainian military said Russian warplanes that took off from Belarus fired missiles at the Lviv region near the Polish border and four cruise missiles were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses.

The western town has been relatively spared so far in the conflict and serves as a haven for refugees and international aid agencies.

In Mariupol, Reuters reporters in Russian-held districts reached the Ilyich Steelworks, one of two metallurgical plants where the defenders held out in underground tunnels and bunkers. Moscow claimed to have captured him on Friday.

The factory was reduced to a ruin of twisted steel and blown concrete, with no sign of defenders present. Several bodies of civilians lay scattered in the surrounding streets, including a woman dressed in a pink parka and white shoes.

Someone had spray painted “mined” on a fence near a defaced gas station. In a rare sign of life, a red car drove slowly down an otherwise empty street, the word “children” scrawled on a card taped to the windshield.

The governor of eastern Kharkiv province said at least one person was killed and 18 injured in a missile strike. In Mykolaiv, a town near the southern front, Russia said it hit a military vehicle repair factory.

The attacks followed Russia’s announcement on Friday that it would step up its long-range strikes in retaliation for unspecified acts of ‘sabotage’ and ‘terrorism’, hours after confirming the sinking of its flagship Black Sea, the Moskva.

kyiv and Washington claim that the ship, whose sinking has become a symbol of Ukrainian defiance, was hit by Ukrainian missiles. Moscow says she sank after a fire and her crew of around 500 were evacuated.

A month and a half after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Russia is trying to seize territories in the south and east after withdrawing from the north following an assault on kyiv which was pushed back to the outskirts of the capital.

Russian troops retreating from the north left behind towns littered with the bodies of civilians, evidence of what US President Joe Biden this week called genocide – an attempt to erase Ukrainian national identity.

Russia denies targeting civilians and says the purpose of its “special military operation” is to disarm its neighbor, defeat nationalists and protect separatists in the southeast.

“EVACUATE WHILE STILL POSSIBLE”

If Mariupol falls, it would be the biggest prize of Russia’s war so far. It is the main port of Donbass, a region of two provinces to the south-east which Moscow demands that it be entirely ceded to the separatists.

The Ukrainian defense is concentrated around Azovstal, another huge steelworks which has not yet yielded.

The owner of the two giant ironworks in Mariupol, Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, has pledged to rebuild the city. “Mariupol has been and always will be a Ukrainian city,” Akhmetov told Reuters. Read more

Ukraine says it has so far held back Russian advances elsewhere in the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where at least one person has been killed in overnight shelling. Read more

But an adviser to Zelenskiy said the country needed a faster supply of weapons from its European Union partners. “Ukraine needs weapons. Not in a month. Now,” Mykhailo Podolyak said in a Twitter post.

Ukraine took over in the first phase of a war. It successfully deployed mobile units armed with Western-supplied anti-tank missiles against Russian armored convoys confined to roads by muddy terrain.

But Putin appears determined to capture more Donbass territory to claim victory in a war that has left Russia under increasingly punitive Western sanctions and with few allies.

Zelenskiy said around 2,500-3,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed so far and up to 20,000 Russian troops.

Moscow has given no update on its military casualties since March 25, when it said 1,351 people had died. Western estimates of Russian casualties are several times higher, while there are few independent estimates of Ukrainian casualties.

Ukraine says civilian deaths are impossible to count, estimating at least 20,000 killed in Mariupol alone.

Overall, around a quarter of Ukrainians have been driven from their homes, including a tenth of the population who have fled abroad.

Despite Russian attacks, a sign of the improving situation in Kyiv, the embassies of Italy and France have resumed work in the capital for the first time since the start of the war, their ambassadors said.

Reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv, Reuters reporters in Mariupol and Reuters offices worldwide Writing by Peter Graff and Conor Humphries Editing by Frances Kerry and Angus MacSwan

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