By CARA AN­NA | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrain­ian au­thor­i­ties said Sun­day that Rus­sia’s mil­i­tary bombed an art school shel­ter­ing some 400 peo­ple in the em­bat­tled port city of Mar­i­upol, where Ukraine’s pres­i­dent said an un­re­lent­ing Russ­ian siege would be re­mem­bered for cen­turies to come.

It was the sec­ond time in less than a week that city of­fi­cials re­port­ed a pub­lic build­ing where res­i­dents had tak­en shel­ter com­ing un­der at­tack. A bomb hit a Mar­i­upol the­ater with more than 1,300 be­lieved to be in­side on Wednes­day, lo­cal of­fi­cials said.

There was no im­me­di­ate word on ca­su­al­ties from the re­port­ed strike on the art school, which The As­so­ci­at­ed Press could not in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy. Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials have not giv­en an up­date on the search of the the­atre since Fri­day, when they said at least 130 had been res­cued.

Mar­i­upol, a strate­gic port on the Azov Sea, has been un­der bom­bard­ment for at least three weeks and has seen some of the worst hor­rors of the war in Ukraine. At least 2,300 peo­ple have died, some of whom had to be buried in mass graves, and food, wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty have run low.

“To do this to a peace­ful city, what the oc­cu­piers did, is a ter­ror that will be re­mem­bered for cen­turies to come,” Ukraine’s Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy said in his night­ly video ad­dress to the na­tion. “The more Rus­sia us­es ter­ror against Ukraine, the worse the con­se­quences for it.”

In re­cent days, Russ­ian forces have bat­tled their way in­to the city, cut­ting it off from the Azov Sea and dev­as­tat­ing a mas­sive steel plant. The fall of Mar­i­upol would be an im­por­tant but cost­ly vic­to­ry for the Rus­sians, whose ad­vance is large­ly stalled out­side oth­er ma­jor cities more than three weeks in­to the biggest land in­va­sion in Eu­rope since World War II.

In ma­jor cities across Ukraine, hun­dreds of men, women and chil­dren have been killed in Russ­ian bom­bard­ments, while mil­lions of civil­ians have raced to un­der­ground shel­ters or fled the coun­try.

In the cap­i­tal, Kyiv, at least 20 ba­bies car­ried by Ukrain­ian sur­ro­gate moth­ers are stuck in a makeshift bomb shel­ter, wait­ing for par­ents to trav­el in­to the war zone to pick them up. The in­fants — some just days old — are be­ing cared for by nurs­es who can­not leave the shel­ter be­cause of con­stant shelling by Russ­ian troops who are try­ing to en­cir­cle the city.

In the hard-hit north-east­ern city of Sumy, au­thor­i­ties evac­u­at­ed 71 or­phaned ba­bies through a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dor, re­gion­al gov­er­nor Dmytro Zhyvyt­skyy said Sun­day. He said the or­phans, most of whom need con­stant med­ical at­ten­tion, would be tak­en to an un­spec­i­fied for­eign coun­try.

Russ­ian shelling killed at least five civil­ians, in­clud­ing a 9-year-old boy, in Kharkiv, an east­ern city that is Ukraine’s sec­ond-largest.

The British De­fense Min­istry said Rus­sia’s fail­ure to gain con­trol of the skies over Ukraine “has sig­nif­i­cant­ly blunt­ed their op­er­a­tional progress,” forc­ing them to re­ly on stand-off weapons launched from the rel­a­tive safe­ty of Russ­ian air­space.

A rock­et at­tack on the Black Sea port city of Myko­laiv ear­ly Fri­day killed as many as 40 marines, a Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary of­fi­cial told The New York Times, mak­ing it one of the dead­liest sin­gle at­tacks on Ukrain­ian forces.

In a sep­a­rate strike, the Russ­ian De­fense Min­istry said a Kinzhal hy­per­son­ic mis­sile hit a Ukrain­ian fu­el de­pot in Kos­tiantyniv­ka, a city near Myko­laiv. The Russ­ian mil­i­tary said Sat­ur­day that it used a Kinzhal for the first time in com­bat to de­stroy an am­mu­ni­tion de­pot in the Carpathi­an Moun­tains in west­ern Ukraine.

Rus­sia has said the Kinzhal, car­ried by MiG-31 fight­er jets, has a range of up to 2,000 kilo­me­tres (about 1,250 miles) and flies at 10 times the speed of sound. Pen­ta­gon press sec­re­tary John Kir­by said Sat­ur­day that the U.S. couldn’t con­firm the use of a hy­per­son­ic mis­sile in Ukraine.

Konashenkov said Kali­br cruise mis­siles launched by Russ­ian war­ships from the Caspi­an Sea were al­so in­volved in the strike on the fu­el de­pot in Kos­tiantyniv­ka and were used to de­stroy an ar­mour re­pair plant in north­ern Ukraine.

Un­ex­pect­ed­ly strong Ukrain­ian re­sis­tance has dashed Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s hopes for a fast vic­to­ry af­ter he or­dered his troops to in­vade Ukraine on Feb. 24.

While the Krem­lin has said Rus­sia is con­duct­ing a “spe­cial mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion” aimed at le­git­i­mate tar­gets, U.S. De­fense Sec­re­tary Lloyd Austin said Sat­ur­day that “bru­tal, sav­age tech­niques” tar­get­ing civil­ians had al­lowed Moscow’s troops to ad­vance.

U.N. bod­ies have con­firmed more than 847 civil­ian deaths since the war be­gan, though they con­cede the ac­tu­al toll is like­ly much high­er. The U.N. says near­ly 3.4 mil­lion peo­ple have fled Ukraine as refugees.

Es­ti­mates of Russ­ian deaths vary wide­ly, but even con­ser­v­a­tive fig­ures are in the low thou­sands. The re­port­ed bat­tle­field deaths of four Russ­ian gen­er­als — out of an es­ti­mat­ed 20 de­ployed in Ukraine, sug­gest an im­paired com­mand of the fight­ing, said Dmit­ry Goren­burg, a re­searcher on Rus­sia’s se­cu­ri­ty at the Vir­ginia-based CNA think tank. Goren­burg said.

Rus­sia would need 800,000 troops — al­most equal to its en­tire ac­tive-du­ty mil­i­tary — to con­trol Ukraine in the face of pro­longed armed op­po­si­tion, ac­cord­ing to Michael Clarke, for­mer head of the British-based Roy­al Unit­ed Ser­vices In­sti­tute, a de­fense think tank.

“Un­less the Rus­sians in­tend to be com­plete­ly geno­ci­dal — they could flat­ten all the ma­jor cities, and Ukraini­ans will rise up against Russ­ian oc­cu­pa­tion — there will be just con­stant guer­ril­la war,” Clarke said.

Ukraine and Rus­sia have held sev­er­al rounds of ne­go­ti­a­tions aimed at end­ing the con­flict, but the neigh­bour­ing coun­tries re­main di­vid­ed over sev­er­al is­sues. Ze­len­skyy has said he is will­ing to drop Ukraine’s bid to join NA­TO but wants cer­tain se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees from Rus­sia. Moscow is press­ing for Ukraine’s com­plete de­mil­i­ta­riza­tion.

Evac­u­a­tions from Mar­i­upol and oth­er be­sieged cities pro­ceed­ed along eight of 10 hu­man­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dors that Ukraine and Rus­sia agreed to on Sat­ur­day, Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Iry­na Vereshchuk said, and of­fi­cials said a to­tal of 6,623 peo­ple left Kyiv and oth­er cities.

Vereshchuk said planned hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid for the south­ern city of Kher­son, which Rus­sia seized ear­ly in the war, could not be de­liv­ered be­cause the trucks were stopped along the way by Russ­ian troops.

Mar­i­upol au­thor­i­ties said Sun­day that near­ly 40,000 peo­ple had left the city in the last week, the vast ma­jor­i­ty in their own ve­hi­cles, de­spite on­go­ing air and ar­tillery strikes.

The Mar­i­upol city coun­cil claimed Sat­ur­day that Russ­ian sol­diers had forcibly re­lo­cat­ed sev­er­al thou­sand city res­i­dents, most­ly women and chil­dren, to Rus­sia. It didn’t say where, and AP could not im­me­di­ate­ly con­firm the claim.

Some Rus­sians al­so have fled their coun­try amid a wide­spread crack­down on dis­sent. Since the in­va­sion of Ukraine start­ed, po­lice have ar­rest­ed thou­sands of an­ti-war pro­test­ers, while gov­ern­ment agen­cies have si­lenced in­de­pen­dent me­dia and cut off ac­cess to so­cial me­dia sites like Face­book and Twit­ter.

In Ukraine, Ze­len­skyy on Sun­day or­dered the ac­tiv­i­ties of 11 po­lit­i­cal par­ties with links to Rus­sia to be sus­pend­ed dur­ing the pe­ri­od of mar­tial law. The largest of those par­ties has 44 out of 450 seats in the coun­try’s par­lia­ment.

“Ac­tiv­i­ties by politi­cians aimed at dis­cord and col­lab­o­ra­tion will not suc­ceed,” he said in the ad­dress.

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As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Yuras Kar­manau in Lviv, Ukraine, and oth­er AP jour­nal­ists around the world con­tributed to this re­port.