Russia renews Mariupol attacks, top US officials to visit Kyiv, Ukraine says

Russia resumed its assault on the last Ukrainian defenders holed up in a giant steel works in Mariupol, days after Moscow declared victory in the southern city and said its forces did not need to take the plant.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the country's army was not ready to try to break through the siege of the port city.

But he said America's top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, would visit Kyiv on Sunday and discuss the types of weapons Ukraine needs as the crisis enters its third month.

"As soon as we have (more weapons), as soon as there are enough of them, believe me, we will immediately retake this or that territory, which is temporarily occupied," Zelensky told a Saturday evening news conference.

The White House has not confirmed any travel plans for Blinken and Austin. The State Department and Pentagon declined to comment.

The attack on Mariupol, the biggest battle of the conflict, has raged for weeks. Capturing the city is seen as vital to Russia's attempts to link the eastern Donbas region with Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Moscow seized in 2014.

Moscow-backed separatists have held territory in the Donbas region for years.

Ukraine estimates tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in Mariupol and says 100,000 civilians are still there. The United Nations and Red Cross say the civilian toll is at least in the thousands.

A new attempt to evacuate civilians failed on Saturday, an aide to Mariupol's mayor said.

In the Black Sea port of Odesa, at least eight people were killed, Zelensky said. Two missiles struck a military facility and two residential buildings and two more were destroyed on Saturday, the Ukrainian armed forces said.

The death toll could not be independently verified. The last big strike on or near Odesa was in early April.

Air raid sirens were heard in Odesa and Mykolaiv, a city near the Black Sea, before dawn on Sunday, but there were no immediate reports of fresh attacks.

'MISSILE TERROR'

Zelensky said Russia had already fired most of its missile arsenal at Ukraine. "Of course, they still have missiles left. Of course, they can still continue the missile terror against our people," he said.

"But what they have already done is a powerful enough argument for the world to finally recognise Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and the Russian army as a terrorist organization."

Russia has denied targeting civilians in its "special military operation" that began on February 24.

The Russian defence ministry said it used high-precision missiles to destroy a logistics terminal in Odesa containing weapons supplied by the United States and European nations.

It also said Russian forces had killed up to 200 Ukrainian troops and destroyed more than 30 vehicles on Saturday.

Russian General Rustam Minnekayev said on Friday Moscow wanted control of the whole of southern Ukraine, comments Ukraine said indicated Russia had wider goals than its declared aim of demilitarising the country. Kyiv and the West call the invasion an unjustified war of aggression.

Russia's defence ministry on Friday said Mariupol's last fighters had been "securely blockaded" at the steel plant. On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin had declared the city "liberated," declaring that troops would not storm Azovstal.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a political adviser to Zelensky, said Ukrainian troops in the steel complex were holding out and attempting counterattacks. More than 1,000 civilians are also in the plant, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Three people were killed and seven wounded by Russian shelling in the eastern region of Kharkiv on Saturday, the region's governor said.