Russian forces in Ukraine tried to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol on Saturday while attempting to crush the last corner of resistance in a location of high symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said.

The reported assault on the eve of Orthodox Easter came after the Kremlin claimed its military had seized all of Mariupol except for the Azovstal plant and as Russia’s military pounded other cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine. Officials reported that Russia fired at least six cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa, killing five people.

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Russian forces have taken over the eastern Ukrainian city of Kreminna after launching an offensive in the region.

Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of the Luhansk region, said in a briefing Russian troops captured the area while Ukrainian troops withdrew, Reuters reported.

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Turkey launched a new ground and air cross-border operation against suspected Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) bases in Duhok province, the Turkish defense minister announced early on Monday.

Turkish jets and artillery struck PKK targets consisting of “shelters, bunkers, caves, tunnels, ammunition depots and a so-called headquarter belonging to the terrorist organization,” Hulusi Akar said.

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Ukrainian soldiers appeared to defy a Russian ultimatum to lay down their arms on Sunday in the pulverised port of Mariupol which Moscow said its forces had almost completely seized in what would be its biggest prize of the nearly two-month war.

Long after a 3am GMT deadline, there was no sign of surrender by Ukrainian fighters holed up in the Azovstal steelworks overlooking the Sea of Azov.

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Authorities in Russia’s Bryansk region bordering Ukraine have accused Kyiv of shelling the Russian town of Klimovo and allegedly causing casualties, while the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (RNBO) rejected the accusations, calling them “an attempt to ignite anti-Ukraine hysteria in Russia.”

The Bryansk region’s governor, Aleksandr Bogomaz, said on April 14 that two buildings were damaged in the attack, which he said was conducted by the armed forces of Ukraine.

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