Moscow's Kalibr missiles struck an arms depot in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region housing weapons from the United States and European countries, Russia's Defense Ministry said Wednesday as Russian forces pounded the Azovstal steel plant where civilians and the last defenders of the besieged southern city of Mariupol are holed up.
The Russian Defense Ministry, which said its air force had destroyed 59 Ukrainian military targets overnight, said the missiles had "destroyed hangars with a large batch of foreign weapons and ammunition supplied to Ukrainian troops by the United States and European countries."
It was not possible to independently confirm the Russian claim, which did not say which kinds of weapons were housed in the hangars.
Russia has warned the United States that large Western deliveries of weapons to Ukraine are fuelling the nine-week-old conflict.
The United States and NATO have ruled out sending their own forces to Ukraine, but Washington and its European allies have supplied large quantities of weapons to Kyiv, including drones and anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.
Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to Mariupol's mayor, said there had been no let-up in airstrikes on the Azovstal plant despite Russian President Vladimir Putin saying there was no need to storm it after declaring "victory" in the port city.
"Air attacks on Azovstal are not subsiding. No ceasefire, but attempts to storm again and again. Despite the statements (by Putin)," Andryushchenko wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
"At the same time, street fighting continues again in the sector between the Azovstal plant's management (buildings) to the street."
Local officials say much of Mariupol has been destroyed in weeks of Russian bombardment and siege since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, and that about 100,000 civilians are still in the city. Hundred of fighters and civilians are believed to still be in the vast steel works.
Ukrainian officials have described the situation in Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, as a "humanitarian catastrophe."
Andryushchenko said no agreements had been reached on trying to evacuate civilians from Mariupol on Wednesday. Many previous efforts to arrange a cease-fire to allow residents to leave the city have broken down.
Russia denies targeting civilians in its "special military operation" in Ukraine and each side blames the other for the repeated failure to establish humanitarian corridors.
Russia had announced Monday plans to open a humanitarian corridor for civilians to leave the Azovstal plant but Kyiv denied reaching any agreement on this with Russia.
'Several villages in east captured'
Ukraine said Wednesday that Russian forces had pushed deeper into the east of the country and captured several villages as part of Moscow's offensive to take control of Donbass.
Moscow said earlier this month it was withdrawing its invading troops from around the capital Kyiv to focus its military efforts on capturing Donetsk and Luhansk in east Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that Russian forces had pushed out Kyiv's army from Velyka Komyshuvakha and Zavody in the northeastern Kharkiv region and had gained control over Zarichne and Novotoshkivske in Donetsk.
Zarichne is just 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the regional hub of Kramatorsk, where Russian attacks this month on a train station shuttling residents to safety in the east left dozens dead.
The Defense Ministry cautioned that Russian forces were "continuing an offensive in the direction of Nyzhnye and Orikhiv" in the central Zaporizhzhia region.
Pro-Russian separatists have controlled the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since 2014 when the Kremlin annexed the Crimean Peninsula following street demonstrations that ousted Ukraine's Moscow-friendly leader.
Russia has said the offensive in the east would create land border between the separatist-held territory and the Black Sea peninsula.