Ukraine will not give up the city of Mariupol and lay down arms, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said early on Monday.

       The Russian defence ministry said Ukrainian and foreign armed units must drop their weapons “without exception” and leave between 7am and 9am (UK time) on Monday, in exchange for safe passage out of town.

       Mariupol residents were given until 5am (local time) to respond to the demand, which included them raising a white flag. Russia did not say what action it would take if the offer were rejected.

       "There can be no question of any surrender, laying down of arms," the Ukrainska Pravda news portal quoted Ms Vereshchuk as saying.

       "We have already informed the Russian side about this."

       Russian Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev said Russian forces would allow two corridors out of the coastal city, heading either east towards Russia or west to other parts of Ukraine.

       Ms Vereshchuk said: "I wrote: 'Instead of wasting time on eight pages of letters, just open the corridor.'"

       President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN that Ukrainians "have not greeted Russian soldiers with a bunch of flowers", but with "weapons in their hands".

       Moscow could not hope to rule the country, given Ukrainians' enmity towards the Russian forces, he said.

       Vladimir Putin has been accused of “abducting and deporting” thousands of civilians from Mariupol and transporting them deep inside Russia. Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, said she was "appalled" by the Kremlin's atrocities in Mariupol.

       Speaking in a video address early on Monday, Mr Zelensky said about 400 civilians were taking shelter at an art school in the besieged Azov Sea port city when it was struck by a Russian bomb.

       "They are under the rubble, and we don't know how many of them have survived," he said. "But we know that we will certainly shoot down the pilot who dropped that bomb, like about 100 other such mass murderers whom we already have downed."

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       US President Joe Biden will travel to Poland on Friday to meet with President Andrzej Duda for discussions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the White House said.

       "The President will discuss how the United States, alongside our Allies and partners, is responding to the humanitarian and human rights crisis that Russia's unjustified and unprovoked war on Ukraine has created," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.

       Mr Biden's trip will come after a visit to Belgium to meet with leaders from Nato, the G7 and the European Union.

       "The trip will be focused on continuing to rally the world in support of the Ukrainian people and against President Putin's invasion of Ukraine," Ms Psaki said of Mr Biden's trip to Europe.

       "But there are no plans to travel into Ukraine."

       There is an ammonia leak at a chemical plant in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy besieged by Russian troops, Sumy regional governor Dmytro Zhyvytsky said on Monday.

       Mr Zhyvytsky did not say what had caused the leak reported at 4.30am local time (2.30am GMT) at the Sumykhimprom plant.

       He said the area within a five-kilometre radius around the plant was hazardous.

       Shelling hit residential houses and a shopping district in Kyiv's Podil district late on Sunday, killing at least four people, city authorities said.

       "According to the information we have at the moment, several homes and one of the shopping centres [were hit]," city mayor Vitali Klitschko said on his Telegram channel.

       He said rescue teams were putting out a large fire at the shopping centre, while other details are still to be confirmed.

       The Kyiv department of the state emergency service said four people had been killed.

       Russia's invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people, displaced more than three million and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States.

       Russian President Vladimir Putin says the "special military operation" is aimed at disarming Ukraine and rooting out dangerous nationalists.

       Russia gave Mariupol an ultimatum late on Sunday, urging its defenders to surrender before 5am on Monday.

       "We call on units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, territorial defence battalions, foreign mercenaries to stop hostilities, lay down their arms and, along the humanitarian corridors agreed with the Ukrainian side, enter the territories controlled by Kyiv," said Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Russian National Defence Control Centre.

       The Russian defence ministry, addressing Mariupol authorities on messaging app Telegram, wrote: "You are the ones who now have the right to make a historic choice - either you are with your people or you are with the criminals.

       "Otherwise, the court martial that awaits you is only a little of what you have already earned because of your despicable attitude toward your own citizens, as well as the horrible crimes and provocations you have committed."

       Mariupol, a strategic, mostly Russian-speaking port in the southeast, has been one of the main targets of Moscow's attacks.

       The city has been hammered by Russian shelling for days, has seen a near-total communications blackout and is cut off from food, water and other supplies.

       The Russian defence ministry said it would open humanitarian corridors to allow residents to leave by 10am if the surrender was agreed.

       Mariupol Mayor Piotr Andryushchenko has also rejected Russia's demands.

       He said in a Facebook post that he did not need to wait until morning to respond, and cursed at the Russians, according to news agency Interfax Ukraine.

       The Russian Ministry of Defence said authorities in Mariupol could face a military tribunal if they sided with what it described as "bandits", the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported.

       Previous bids to allow residents to evacuate Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities have failed or have been only partially successful, with bombardments continuing as civilians sought to flee.

       Russia said a "terrible humanitarian catastrophe" was unfolding in Mariupol.

       "Lay down your arms," Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, the director of the Russian National Centre for Defence Management, said in a briefing distributed by the defence ministry.

       "A terrible humanitarian catastrophe has developed," Mizintsev said. "All who lay down their arms are guaranteed safe passage out of Mariupol."

       City officials and aid groups say food, water and electricity have run low in Mariupol and fighting has kept out humanitarian convoys. Communications are severed.

       The strategic port has been under bombardment for more than three weeks and has seen some of the worst horrors of the war. City officials said at least 2,300 people had died, with some buried in mass graves.

       Some who were able to flee Mariupol tearfully hugged relatives as they arrived by train on Sunday in Lviv, about 1,100km (680 miles) to the west.

       "Battles took place over every street. Every house became a target," said Olga Nikitina, who was embraced by her brother as she got off the train. "Gunfire blew out the windows. The apartment was below freezing."

       Maryna Galla narrowly escaped with her 13-year-old son. She said she huddled in the basement of a cultural centre along with about 250 people for three weeks without water, electricity or gas.

       "We left (home) because shells hit the houses across the road. There was no roof. There were people injured," Ms Galla said.

       Her mother, father and grandparents stayed behind and "don't even know that we have left".

       US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said Ukrainian resistance means Putin's "forces on the ground are essentially stalled".

       "It's had the effect of him moving his forces into a woodchipper," Mr Austin told CBS on Sunday.

       Russian forces entered Mariupol in recent days - cutting it off from the sea and devastating a massive steel plant. But taking the city could prove costly.

       "The block-by-block fighting in Mariupol itself is costing the Russian military time, initiative, and combat power," the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a briefing.

       In a blunt assessment, the think tank concluded that Russia failed in its initial campaign to take the capital of Kyiv and other major cities quickly, and its stalled invasion is creating conditions for a "very violent and bloody" stalemate.

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