KYIV: Ukraine's shelling killed and wounded its own civilians in the southern region of Kherson, Russia said on Sunday (May 1), while some civilians got away from a steel plant in besieged Mariupol.
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, became the latest Western official to visit Kyiv in a show of support for Ukraine.
We believe that we are visiting you to say thank you for your fight for freedom ... Your fight is a fight for everyone. Our commitment is to be there for you until the fight is done," Pelosi said in a video shared by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Twitter.
Pelosi, who was accompanied by several US lawmakers, said on Friday she hoped to pass a US$33 billion aid package for Ukraine that President Joe Biden has requested "as soon as possible".
Russia's defence ministry accused Ukraine's forces of shelling a school, kindergarten and cemetery in the villages of Kyselivka and Shyroka Balka in the Kherson region, the Russian RIA news agency said on Sunday.
The ministry gave no further details. There was no immediate response from Ukraine and Reuters could not independently verify the report.
Russian forces have captured the town of Kherson, giving them a foothold just 100km north of Russian-annexed Crimea, and have mostly occupied Mariupol, a strategic eastern port city on the Azov Sea.
Ukraine's military said in a bulletin on Sunday that Russian forces were fighting to break beyond Kherson's administrative borders and prepare the way for attacks on the cities of Mykolayiv and Kryvyi Rih.
In Mariupol, Russia declared victory on Apr 21 even as hundreds of holdout Ukrainian troops and civilians took shelter in the Azovstal steel works.
On Saturday, a Ukrainian fighter inside said some 20 women and children had made it out.
"We are getting civilians out of the rubble with ropes - it's the elderly, women and children," said the fighter, Sviatoslav Palamar, referring to wreckage within the sprawling plant.
Palamar said Russia and Ukraine were respecting a local ceasefire and he hoped the evacuated civilians would be taken to the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia to the northwest.