Ukrainians defy deadline to surrender in Mariupol or die

A building damaged during fighting in Mariupol (Alexei Alexandrov/AP)

The battered port city of Mariupol appeared on the brink of falling to Russian forces on Sunday, after seven weeks under siege, a development that would give Moscow a crucial success in Ukraine following Russia’s failure to storm the capital and the loss of its Black Sea flagship.

The Russian military estimated that about 2,500 Ukrainian fighters holding out at a hulking steel plant with a warren of underground passageways provided the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol.