Russia-Ukraine live updates: Kyiv doubtful of Moscow pullback; Zelensky seeks global security pledge

President Vladimir Putin has signaled that Russia will keep fighting for Mariupol, a strategic Ukrainian port city devastated by recent attacks — unless local fighters lay down their arms.

During a call with French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, Putin apparently emphasized that to resolve a growing humanitarian crisis in the city, “Ukrainian nationalist militants must stop resisting and lay down their weapons,” according to a Kremlin readout of the call posted on Telegram. Paris has not yet published its own readout.

Pictures captured Tuesday by Maxar Technologies show the toll of Russia’s invasion on civilian infrastructure in the city, including houses and apartment buildings. The images also show long lines of people outside a grocery store. Leaders in Mariupol have warned for weeks of food and water shortages amid a Russian blockade.

Moscow has zeroed in on Mariupol because of its location between Russian-held Crimea and areas of eastern Ukraine held by Russian-backed separatists. Should it capture the city, it would be the Kremlin’s first major strategic victory of the war.

During weeks of intensive fighting, Russian forces have hit shopping centers and apartment buildings, an art school, a hospital and its maternity ward, and a theater where hundreds of people were taking shelter. As many as 300 people were killed in the attack on the theater, according to local officials and eyewitness accounts that couldn’t be independently verified while the city remains under siege.

Evacuations from the city resumed Tuesday, one day after they were halted across the country because of security concerns. More than 1,600 escaped Mariupol and a nearby region, officials said.

Hannah Knowles contributed to this report.

NEW DELHI — Turn on a television in India this past month and the arguments espoused by some of the country’s most popular media personalities follow a pattern: The United States provoked Russia into attacking Ukraine. The Americans were possibly developing biological weapons in Ukraine. Joe Biden, the president who fumbled the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, has no business criticizing India over the war he sparked in Ukraine.

While the Russian invasion has galvanized public opinion against President Vladimir Putin in many Western countries, it has had a strikingly different effect in India, reflecting a gulf between the United States and the world’s largest democracy in how each public perceives the war, Russia and the West.

In recent weeks, some Indian English-language newspapers catering to wealthy urban liberals have carried editorials nudging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take a tougher stance against Putin. But on mainstream talk shows and in the pages of magazines popular with Modi’s right-wing base — a far larger audience — it has mostly been fire and fury directed toward the United States, portrayed as the culprit and instigator of yet another international conflagration.

“The American media, the American establishment wants to conceal this: They don’t like this charge of having anything to do with biological weapons,” Arnab Goswami, the star anchor of India’s top-rated news channel, Republic TV, said in a monologue earlier this month after Moscow and Washington exchanged accusations about bioweapons possibly being researched and used in Ukraine.

Mariupol lost power, mobile communications and Internet as Russia attacked — a blackout that has limited documentation of its residents’ suffering.

Satellite images help capture the Ukrainian port city’s devastation.

Pictures captured Tuesday by Maxar Technologies show the toll of Russia’s invasion on civilian infrastructure, including houses and apartment buildings, according to Maxar.

Maxar says its images from Tuesday also show long lines of people outside a grocery store. Leaders in Mariupol have warned for weeks of food and water shortages amid a Russian blockade.

Also documented: the Mariupol drama theater, where the number of people killed in an airstrike remains unclear. With fighting ongoing, Ukrainian officials have struggled to gather basic information.

Hundreds of people were believed to be sheltering in the theater when it was bombed. Citing eyewitness accounts, the Mariupol City Council has said the strike may have killed 300.

Hannah Knowles, Marisa Iati, Mary Ilyushina, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.