Ukraine gets warplanes as Mariupol officer warns facing ’last days’

Ukraine received fighter jets to help resist the Russian invasion, as Moscow intensified its offensive in the east where a besieged officer in Mariupol warned on April 20 his forces were facing their "last days, if not hours".

The West has responded to a renewed Russian push into the Donbas region with fresh weapons for Kyiv and a push to increase "Moscow's international isolation".

The Pentagon said that Ukraine had recently received fighter planes and parts to bolster its air force, declining to specify the number of aircraft and their origin.

Kyiv has asked its Western partners to provide MiG-29s, which its pilots already know how to fly and a handful of Eastern European countries have.

Control of Donbas and the besieged southern port of Mariupol would allow Moscow to create a southern corridor to the Crimean peninsula that it annexed in 2014, depriving Ukraine of much of its coastline.

In the latest ultimatum issued in its battle to capture Mariupol, Moscow issued another call for the city's defenders to surrender on Wednesday by 2 pm Moscow time (1100 GMT) and announced the opening of a humanitarian corridor for any Ukrainian troops who agreed to lay down their arms.

As the deadline approached, a commander in the besieged Azovstal power plant issued a desperate plea for help, saying his marines were "maybe facing our last days, if not hours".

"The enemy is outnumbering us 10 to one," Serhiy Volyna from the 36th Separate Marine Brigade said.
"We appeal and plead to all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the procedure of extraction and take us to the territory of a third-party state."

Thousands of troops and civilians remain holed up in the plant.

An advisor to the mayor of Mariupol...