After a ceasefire that allowed people to flee, Russian soldiers launched an onslaught Tuesday against the Azovstal steel factory, the last stronghold of Ukrainian forces in the damaged southern port city of Mariupol.

“Using artillery and aircraft, units of the Russian army and the Donetsk People’s Republic are beginning to destroy” the “firing positions” of the Ukrainian troops, the defense ministry said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.

Members of the Azov battalion and other Ukrainian troops, according to the ministry, took their battle positions at the factory during a respite in the fighting.

It was unclear what the attacks meant for a further attempt scheduled for Tuesday to evacuate civilians from the Azovstal complex, where Kyiv said roughly 100 people had been evacuated over the weekend.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom became the first foreign leader to address Ukraine’s parliament since the conflict began, promising a further £300 million ($376 million, 358 million euros) in military help.

The prime minister, speaking via video link, compared Kyiv’s resistance to Britain’s fight against the Nazis during World War II, hailing it as the country’s “finest hour,” and promising to help assure “no one would ever dare to attack you again.”

The European Commission was due to propose a new package of penalties on Tuesday, including a Russian oil embargo, in a further move to penalize Moscow for the February 24 invasion of its neighbor.

Meanwhile, fighting raged in Ukraine’s east and south, with attacks reported in and around Kharkiv, as well as in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, according to Kyiv.

According to regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko, at least nine people were killed in the Donetsk area on Tuesday, including three ladies in Vugledar who were trying to obtain water.

– ‘We don’t live, we survive’ –

Thousands of people have been killed, and more than 13 million have been displaced as a result of the violence, making it Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

Mariupol, a major southern port city, has been under siege for months, with the remaining Ukrainian soldiers isolated inside the massive Azovstal steel complex, where hundreds of residents are thought to be hiding in a maze of underground tunnels.

Although there was no trace of the scheduled convoy in Zaporizhzhia, 200 kilometers to the north-west, where a parking area has been repurposed into a receiving center, by mid-Tuesday, Kyiv stated roughly 100 citizens were transported out.

“The evacuation continues,” the Ukrainian presidency said early Tuesday, before the Russian assault, following an agreement with the UN and the Red Cross.

Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov military unit, said another 20 people were transferred out late Monday after a five-hour delay as “the enemy’s artillery caused new rubble and destruction”.

Elsewhere in Mariupol, residents are emerging from two months of hiding to find their once-vibrant city in ruins.

The city is now largely calm, AFP journalists saw on a recent press tour organized by Russian forces, with daily life dominated by the hunt for the most basic of essentials.

“We don’t live, we survive,” said Irina, a 30-year-old video game designer, as she gathered food and water from an aid distribution point.

– ‘Never easy’ –
In the early weeks of the invasion, Russian forces encircled Ukraine’s capital Kyiv but have shifted to the east, including largely Russian-speaking areas, and south.

Russia’s defense ministry claimed on Tuesday that its forces had hit a logistics center at a military airstrip near the Black Sea port of Odesa that was used to carry foreign-made weaponry.

According to the report, storage facilities storing Turkey’s Bayraktar drones, as well as missiles and ammunition from the US and Europe, were destroyed.

A 15-year-old child was killed in a missile strike on a residential building in Odessa, a primarily Russian-speaking city and cultural centre, local officials reported on Monday.

Russians are advancing towards Lyman and Sloviansk, a major metropolitan hub in the eastern Donbas region whose conquest would be a substantial Russian win, according to the Ukrainian military.

Ukrainian soldiers in Lyman told AFP they have rigged with explosives a railway bridge over the Donets river on the way to Sloviansk, and were waiting for orders to blow it up.

“It’s never easy to destroy one of your own pieces of infrastructure. But between saving a bridge or protecting a city, there’s no question at all,” said one, going by the nom de guerre of “The Engineer”.

– ‘Sham referenda’ –
The United States warned on Monday that Moscow was preparing imminently to annex the eastern regions of Lugansk and Donetsk.

Pro-Russian separatists in the two regions declared independence in 2014, but Moscow has so far stopped short of formally incorporating them as it did that year with the Crimean peninsula.

“Russia plans to engineer referenda upon joining sometime in mid-May,” said Michael Carpenter, the US ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

He claimed that Russia was planning a similar strategy in a third province, Kherson, where Moscow has recently tightened authority and mandated the use of the ruble currency.

He promised that, as with Crimea, the international community will not support Russian-imposed alterations to Ukraine’s borders.

“Such sham referenda — fabricated votes — will not be considered legitimate, nor will any attempts to annex additional Ukrainian territory,” Carpenter said.

– Bracing for new sanctions –
Western powers have leveled unprecedented sanctions against Russia over the war while delivering money and weapons to Ukraine.

The European Commission will on Tuesday propose to member states a new package of measures, including a phased-out ban on Russian oil, officials said.

Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, will be removed from the global banking messaging system SWIFT as part of the package.

Following Monday’s negotiations, the EU issued a warning to member states to prepare for a possible complete collapse in the Russian gas supply, which several EU countries rely on heavily.

Officials from the EU and France said the 27-member union was united with Poland and Bulgaria, which had their gas supply cut off last week after refusing to pay in rubles.