Russia-Ukraine live updates: Putin ‘cancels’ Mariupol steel plant attack; Ukraine demands cease-fire

Russia’s new deadline for the Ukrainian forces in the besieged port city of Mariupol to surrender by 7 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday has passed, raising fresh concerns about the fate of the troops and civilians holed up in a steel plant. Previous ultimatums issued by the Kremlin to surrender were rejected by the Ukrainian authorities.

Ukrainian officials confirmed that fighting continued at the sprawling Azovstal Iron and Steel Works that is serving as the last holdout for Ukrainian fighters.

“Mariupol is holding on,” Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Wednesday in a video. He said Russia was escalating offensives in eastern Ukraine on multiple fronts.

The situation of the Ukrainian soldiers who remain inside the plant, vastly outnumbered and subject to constant shelling by the Russians, seemed desperate. The Ukrainian commander, Maj. Serhiy Volyna of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade, in audio messages sent to The Washington Post, said his soldiers were “dying underground.”