Sept 22: Russia has released 215 Ukrainians it took prisoner after a protracted battle for the port city of Mariupol earlier this year, including top military leaders, a senior official in Kyiv said on Wednesday.

BAKHMUT, Ukraine, June 9: Workers pulled scores of bodies from smashed buildings in an “endless caravan of death” inside the devastated city of Mariupol, authorities said Wednesday, while fears of a global food crisis escalated over Ukraine’s inability to export millions of tons of grain through its blockaded ports.

KYIV, May 8: All women, children and elderly civilians have been evacuated from the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday, after a week-long effort rescued hundreds of people during an ongoing Russian assault at the plant.

LVIV, Ukraine, May 6: Ukrainian fighters in the tunnels underneath Mariupol’s pulverized steel plant held out against Russian troops Thursday in an increasingly desperate and perhaps doomed effort to deny Moscow what would be its biggest success of the war yet: the complete capture of the strategic port city.

KYIV, May 5: Civilians including women and children are still trapped inside Ukraine's besieged city of Mariupol and a prolonged ceasefire is needed to ensure their evacuation as Russia presses its assault, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine, May 2: Ukrainian civilians holed up inside a steel plant in Mariupol under siege by Russian forces nearly two months began evacuating over the weekend and people sheltering elsewhere in the city were to leave Monday, local officials said.

KHARKIV, Ukraine, May 1: Ukrainian forces fought village by village Saturday to hold back a Russian advance through the country’s east, while the United Nations worked to broker a civilian evacuation from the last defensive stronghold in the bombed-out ruins of the port city of Mariupol.

KYIV, Ukraine, April 22: Satellite images released Thursday showed what appeared to be mass graves near Mariupol, and local officials accused Russia of burying up to 9,000 Ukrainian civilians there in an effort to conceal the slaughter taking place in the siege of the port city.

KYIV, Ukraine, April 18: Ukrainian fighters who were holed up in a massive steel plant in the last known pocket of resistance inside the shattered city of Mariupol ignored a surrender-or-die ultimatum from Russia on Sunday and held out against the capture of the strategically vital port.

KYIV, Ukraine, April 12: The mayor of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol said Monday that more than 10,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege of his city, and that the death toll could surpass 20,000, as weeks of attacks and privation leave the bodies of Mariupol’s people “carpeted through the streets.”

ANDRIIVKA, Ukraine, April 7: The mayor of the besieged port city of Mariupol put the number of civilians killed there at more than 5,000 Wednesday, as Ukraine collected evidence of Russian atrocities on the ruined outskirts of Kyiv and braced for what could become a climactic battle for control of the country’s industrial east.

KYIV, Ukraine, March 23: Ukrainian forces battled continuing Russian efforts to occupy Mariupol and claimed to have retaken a strategic suburb of Kyiv on Tuesday, mounting a defense so dogged that it is stoking fears Russia’s Vladimir Putin will escalate the war to new heights.

LVIV, Ukraine, March 21: Russia demanded that Ukrainians in the besieged city of Mariupol lay down their arms Monday in exchange for safe passage out of town, but Ukraine rejected the offer.

LVIV/KYIV, Ukraine, March 16: About 20,000 people have managed to escape the besieged port of Mariupol in private cars, the Ukrainian interior ministry said on Wednesday, but hundreds of thousands remain trapped by Russian shelling, many without heating, power or running water.

KYIV, March 5: Civilians will start being evacuated from the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol Saturday, city officials said, after surrounding Russian forces announced a ceasefire to allow its population to leave.