SEVERODONETSK, Ukraine —

       Russia offered a surrender window to Ukrainian troops defending the devastated port city of Mariupol on Sunday, demanding that they lay down their arms even as Russian forces continued a relentless assault aimed at a complete takeover.

       Ukrainian fighters who have bunkered in the Azovstal steelworks plant were given an exit plan without weapons and ammunition, according to a statement from the Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday.

       The “nationalist battalions and foreign mercenaries” — the Kremlin’s routine description of Ukrainian fighters — have until 1 p.m. Moscow time (2 a.m. PST) on Sunday to leave the plant, the statement said.

       The offer was made “out of purely humanitarian principles,” the statement said, and “the lives of all those who lay down their arms will be spared.”

       It was unclear if the Ukrainian side had accepted the conditions, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that the city was on the verge of being lost, saying that the situation there “remains as severe as possible.”

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       “[It’s] just inhuman. This is what the Russian Federation did, and deliberately continues to destroy cities. Russia is deliberately trying to destroy everyone who is there in Mariupol,” he said.

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       ‘How many graves? Go count them’: Russia batters Ukraine’s east

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       He added that there were only two paths forward: Either Ukraine’s allies provide “all the necessary heavy weapons, planes, and, without exaggeration, immediately, so we can reduce the pressure of the occupiers on Mariupol and unblock it”; or, negotiations in which those allies’ role would be “decisive.”

       Mariupol has endured almost two months of fighting and has become the starkest example of Moscow’s brutal tactics in the invasion of its smaller neighbor. An estimated 100,000 people remain — its pre-war population was 450,000 — in siege conditions, with no food, water or heating, local officials and aid groups say. Much of the city is now under Russian control.

       A takeover of the city, which lies on the Sea of Azov, would be a significant victory for Russia in a war marked more by its forces’ missteps. A win there would not only provide a land bridge from the east to Russian-annexed Crimea, but would also free up Russian forces to move north and link up with the other thrust of the Russian offensive coming from the city of Izyum (some 144 miles north) and complete their encirclement of Eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, the stated objective of the second phase of Russia’s invasion.

       The news comes as Russian troops press on their offensive on cities and towns in the east. On Sunday, the United Kingdom’s Defense Ministry said Russia was deploying additional combat and support equipment from Belarus to locations close to Kharkiv and Severodonetsk.

       “Russian artillery continues to strike Ukrainian positions throughout the east of the country” as part of what the defense ministry said was a shift “in its operational focus.”

       Yet that shift has provided only a partial respite as Russia continues its campaign of strikes in other parts of the country in what it said earlier this week was retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory. Sunday morning brought fresh reports of explosions in Kyiv as a result of what officials said was a missile attack on the city of Brovary, a suburb of the capital. Other attacks were also reported overnight in Kharkiv and the Western city of Lviv.

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       Meanwhile, in the eastern city of Lysychansk, a few miles from the frontline with Russian forces and one of the easternmost points of Ukrainian control, a tense calm pervaded as residents went about their morning shopping ahead of Palm Sunday.

       But in nearby Severodonetsk, workers brought a fresh batch of corpses in body bags to the southern edge of the city, even as a bulldozer dug out a fresh furrow to place in the expanding cemetery. Once workers heaved the bodies into the grave, the bulldozer pushed the displaced earth over them.

       Smoke rises above 400 new graves in the town of Severodonetsk.

       (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

       It was hard but also dangerous work, said Michael Padgaynyi, a white-haired volunteer with a humanitarian organization in town sweating in the morning sun.

       “We’re every day under artillery shelling. Some people from our personnel have been wounded,” he said, pleading for sets of body armor so they could do their grim work with some measure of safety.

       In the distance, a volley of artillery could be heard.

       “We’re just waiting for the big offensive from the Russian side,” he added.

       Moments later, a truck drove up to the cemetery, bringing another group of bodies to be buried.