Russian troops are pressing their offensive in the eastern Donbas region in an attempt to fully seize Ukraine's industrial heartland but have made little headway as fierce Ukrainian counterattacks have slowed their efforts, Ukrainian and British officials said Saturday. Russia continues to fight for full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk areas that make up the Donbas and seeks to secure “a land route between these territories and the occupied Crimea,” including by wiping out the last pocket of resistance in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukraine's General Staff said. Ukrainian forces over the past 24 hours repelled eight Russian attacks in the two regions, destroying nine tanks, 18 armored units and 13 vehicles, a tanker and three artillery systems, the General Staff said. "Units of Russian occupiers are regrouping. Russian enemy continues to launch missile and bomb strikes on military and civilian infrastructure,” the General Staff said on its Facebook page. Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said Saturday that two people were killed by Russian shelling in the city of Popasna. He said an evacuation train for residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk areas was expected to leave Saturday from the eastern city of Pokrovsk bound for the western city of Chop, near Ukraine’s border with Slovakia and Hungary. “In addition to the fact that street fighting continues in the city for several weeks, the Russian army constantly fires at multistory residential buildings and private houses," Haidai wrote on the messaging app Instagram. "Just yesterday, local residents withstood five enemy artillery attacks…. Not all survived,” Also read:Why Washington is boosting heavy arms for Ukraine Britain's Ministry of Defense said despite their increased activity “Russian forces have made no major gains in the last 24 hours as Ukrainian counter-attacks continue to hinder the efforts.” Russia still has not established air or sea control due to Ukrainian resistance, and despite President Vladimir Putin's declaration of victory in Mariupol, “heavy fighting continues to take place, frustrating Russian attempts to capture the city, thus further slowing their desired progress in the Donbas,” the Ministry of Defense said. Ukrainian officials were trying again Saturday to evacuate women, children and the elderly from Mariupol after many previous attempts failed. The effort was to get underway at midday “if everything goes according to plan,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on the messaging app Telegram. Russia has pulled a dozen crack military units from Mariupol to bolster the offensive elsewhere in the Donbas, while other troops continue to keep the remaining Ukrainian troops in the city pinned in the Azovstal steelworks, the last remaining stronghold, Ukrainian officials said. Putin is said to have ordered his forces not to storm the plant to finish off the defenders but to seal it off instead in an apparent bid to force them to surrender. Russian forces have been pummeling the 2,000 Ukrainian fighters still holed up inside, the mayor’s office reported on Friday. Also read: Ukraine: Russians shift elite units to the new battleground “Every day they drop several bombs on Azovstal,” said Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor. “Fighting, shelling, bombing do not stop.” Mariupol has been reduced largely to smoking rubble by weeks of bombardment, and Russian state TV showed the flag of the pro-Moscow Donetsk separatists raised on what it said was the city’s highest point, its TV tower. It also showed what it said was the main building at Azovstal steel plant in flames. Under cover of darkness, Ukrainian forces have managed to deliver weapons to the besieged steelworks via helicopter, said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. Overall, the Kremlin has thrown more than 100,000 troops and mercenaries from Syria and Libya into the fight in Ukraine and is deploying more forces in the country every day, Danilov said. “We have a difficult situation, but our army is defending our state,” he said. Mariupol has taken on outsize importance in the war. Capturing it would deprive the Ukrainians of a vital port and complete a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Putin seized from Ukraine in 2014. It would also allow Putin to throw more of his forces into the potentially climactic battle for the Donbas and its coal mines, factories and other industries, or what the Kremlin has now declared to be its main objective. The latest satellite photos from Maxar Technologies revealed what appeared to be a second mass grave site near Mariupol. The site at a cemetery in the town of Vynohradne has several newly dug parallel trenches measuring about 40 meters (131 feet) long, Maxar said in a statement. A day earlier, Maxar released photos of what appeared to be rows upon rows of more than 200 freshly dug mass graves next to a cemetery in the town of Manhush, outside Mariupol. That prompted Ukrainian accusations that the Russians are trying to conceal the slaughter of civilians in the city. “This confirms again that the occupiers arrange the collection, burial and cremation of dead residents in every district of the city,” Andryushchenko said on the Telegram messaging app. The Ukrainians estimated that the graves seen in the photos released Thursday could hold 9,000 bodies. The Kremlin did not respond to the satellite pictures. More than 100,000 people — down from a prewar population of about 430,000 — are believed trapped in Mariupol with little food, water or heat, and over 20,000 civilians have been killed in the nearly two-month siege, according to Ukrainian authorities. Most attempts to evacuate civilians from the city have failed because of what the Ukrainians said was continued Russian shelling.

Ukraine braced for a climactic battle for control of the besieged country's industrial east after Russian forces withdrew from the shattered outskirts of Kyiv to regroup and intensify their offensive across the Donbas region, where authorities urged people to evacuate before time runs out. The mayor of the southern port city of Mariupol said Wednesday that more than 5,000 civilians had been killed there. Meanwhile, in areas north of the capital, Ukrainian officials gathered evidence of Russian atrocities amid signs Moscow’s troops killed people indiscriminately before retreating over the past several days. In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that the Russian military is building up its forces for a new offensive in the east, where the Kremlin has said its goal is to “liberate” the Donbas, Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial heartland. Ukraine, too, was preparing for battle, he said. “We will fight and we will not retreat,” he said. “We will seek all possible options to defend ourselves until Russia begins to seriously seek peace. This is our land. This is our future. And we won’t give them up.” Ukrainian authorities urged people living in the Donbas to evacuate immediately. Also read:Ukrainian refugees find route to US goes through Mexico “Later, people will come under fire,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, “and we won’t be able to do anything to help them.” A U.S. defense official speaking on condition of anonymity said Russia had completed pulling out all of its estimated 24,000 or more troops from the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas in the north, sending them into Belarus or Russia to resupply and reorganize, probably to return to fight in the east. But a Western official, also speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence estimates, said it will take Russia’s battle-damaged forces as much as a month to regroup for a major push on eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its Western allies have moved to impose new sanctions against the Kremlin over killings they labeled as war crimes. Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko said that of the more than 5,000 civilians killed during weeks of Russian bombardment and street fighting, 210 were children. Russian forces bombed hospitals, including one where 50 people burned to death, he said. Boichenko said more than 90% of the city’s infrastructure was destroyed. The attacks on the strategic city on the Sea of Azov have cut off food, water, fuel and medicine and pulverized homes and businesses. British defense officials said 160,000 people remained trapped in the city, which had a prewar population of 430,000. A humanitarian relief convoy accompanied by the Red Cross has been trying for days without success to get into the city. Capturing Mariupol would allow Russia to secure a continuous land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014. In the north, Ukrainian authorities said the bodies of least 410 civilians have been found in towns around Kyiv, victims of what Zelenskyy has portrayed as a Russian campaign of murder, rape, dismemberment and torture. Some victims had apparently been shot at close range. Some were found with their hands bound. In his address Wednesday night, Zelenskyy accused Russia of interfering with an international investigation into possible war crimes by removing corpses and trying to hide other evidence in Bucha, northeast of Kyiv. “We have information that the Russian troops have changed tactics and are trying to remove the dead people, the dead Ukrainians, from the streets and cellars of territory they occupied,” he said. “This is only an attempt to hide the evidence and nothing more.” Switching from Ukrainian to Russian, Zelenskyy urged ordinary Russians “to somehow confront the Russian repressive machine” instead of being “equated with the Nazis for the rest of your life.” Also read:Mariupol’s dead put at 5,000 as Ukraine braces in the east He called on Russians to demand an end to the war, “if you have even a little shame about what the Russian military is doing in Ukraine.” In reaction to the alleged atrocities outside Kyiv, the U.S. announced sanctions against Putin's two adult daughters and said it is toughening penalties against Russian banks. Britain banned investment in Russia and pledged to end its dependence on Russian coal and oil by the end of the year. The U.S. Senate planned to take up legislation Thursday to end normal trade relations with Russia and to codify President Joe Biden’s executive action banning imports of Russian oil. The trade suspension would allow Biden to enact higher tariffs on certain Russian imports. The European Union is also expected to take additional punitive measures, including an embargo on coal. The Kremlin has insisted its troops have committed no war crimes and alleged the images out of Bucha were staged by the Ukrainians. More bodies were yet to be collected in Bucha. The Associated Press saw two in a house in a silent neighborhood. From time to time there was the muffled boom of workers clearing the town of mines and other unexploded ordnance. Workers at a cemetery began to load more than 60 bodies into a grocery shipping truck for transport to a facility for further investigation. Police said they found at least 20 bodies in the Makariv area west of Kyiv. In the village of Andriivka, residents said the Russians arrived in early March and took locals’ phones. Some people were detained, then released. Others met unknown fates. Some described sheltering for weeks in cellars normally used for storing vegetables. “First we were scared, now we are hysterical,” said Valentyna Klymenko, 64. She said she, her husband and two neighbors weathered the siege by sleeping on stacks of potatoes covered with a mattress and blankets. “We didn’t cry at first. Now we are crying.” To the north of the village, in the town of Borodyanka, rescue workers searched through the rubble of apartment blocks, looking for bodies. Thwarted in their efforts to swiftly take the capital, increasing numbers of Putin’s troops, along with mercenaries, have been reported moving into the Donbas. Ukrainian forces have been fighting Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas since 2014. Ahead of its Feb. 24 invasion, Moscow recognized the Luhansk and Donetsk regions as independent states. The United States and the United Kingdom boycotted an informal meeting Wednesday of the U.N. Security Council called by Russia to press its baseless claims that the U.S. has biological warfare laboratories in Ukraine. The meeting was the latest of several moves by Russia that have led Western countries to accuse Moscow of using the U.N. as a platform for disinformation to divert attention from the war. Russia's allegations have previously been debunked. Ukraine does own and operate a network of biological labs that have received funding and research support from the U.S. and are not a secret. The labs are part of a program that aims to reduce the likelihood of deadly outbreaks, whether natural or manufactured. The U.S. efforts date to work in the 1990s to dismantle the former Soviet Union’s program for weapons of mass destruction.

With Moscow launching a full-fledged attack on its eastern European neighbour, New Delhi on Thursday called for restraint from all sides as Ukraine sought Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention in ending the Russian offensive. "Modi ji is one of the most powerful, respected world leaders. You have a privileged, strategic relation with Russia. If Modiji speaks to Putin we are hopeful he'll respond," Ukraine's envoy in Delhi, Igor Polikha, told the local media. "India should be much more actively engaged, given the privileged relation India has with Russia. Not just for our safety, but of your own citizen's safety too, we need intervention of India," he added. Meanwhile, the Indian Embassy in Kyiv this morning advised all its nationals stranded in Ukraine to remain calm and stay put wherever they were. "The present situation in Ukraine is highly uncertain. Please maintain calm and remain safe wherever you are, be it in your homes, hostels, accommodations or in transit," the Indian Embassy said in an advisory. Also read: Bangladesh asks its nationals in Ukraine to move to safer places Describing the situation as “highly uncertain”, the Embassy said, "All those who are travelling to Kyiv, including those travelling from western parts of Kyiv, are advised to return to their respective cities temporarily, especially towards safer places along the western bordering countries." An estimated 15,000 Indians are said to be currently in Ukraine. Also read: Russia says it knocked out Ukraine air defenses Earlier too, India had called for a "peaceful resolution" of the Kyiv crisis. "We call for a peaceful resolution of the situation through sustained diplomatic efforts for long term peace and stability in the region and beyond," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi told the media last month. Russia invaded Ukraine in the early hours of Thursday, with its armed forces crossing into the neighbouring country from all directions with tanks and heavy equipment. Global media outlets have reported about Russian missile strikes and explosions in major Ukrainian cities.