SEVERODONETSK, Ukraine, May 9, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Russia will celebrate its

1945 victory over Nazi Germany Monday with a show of military might as its
army battles Kyiv's forces in the east of Ukraine, where 60 people were
killed in an air strike on a school sheltering civilians.

  President Vladimir Putin is set to flaunt Russia's power in celebration of
Victory Day, in an event that has taken on great prominence as he seeks to
justify a war that has gone on far longer -- and at far higher cost -- than
expected.

  But as huge missiles are towed through Moscow's Red Square and a planned
flyover will feature fighter jets showing support for the war, Ukraine will
be desperately battling to stop a hoped-for military breakthrough.

  And civilians continue to bear the brunt of the bloodshed, with President
Volodymyr Zelensky confirming that 60 were killed in a Russian air strike on
a school in the eastern village of Bilogorivka -- one of the highest one-day
tolls since Moscow's forces invaded on February 24.

  Lugansk region governor Sergiy Gaiday said rescuers were searching for
survivors in the debris left by the Russian attack on the school there,
though the outlook was bleak.

  "Bombs fell on the school," he said on Telegram, "and unfortunately it was
completely destroyed."

  - 'Surrender is not an option' -

  To the south, in the devastated port city of Mariupol, depleted Ukrainian
forces are defending their final bastion at the Azovstal steelworks, from
which scores of civilians have been evacuated in recent days.

  An AFP reporter in the city of Zaporizhzhia said Sunday that eight buses
carrying 174 civilians -- including 40 evacuated from the plant -- had
arrived in that Ukrainian-controlled city.

  "The latest information that I have from both Ukraine and Russia is that
there are no more civilians there (Azovstal), but we are not in a position to
verify. We weren't inside the plant," Osnat Lubrani, the UN's humanitarian
coordinator in Ukraine, told AFP.

  More than 600 civilians have now been safely evacuated from the steelworks
and other areas of Mariupol, the UN said.

  "We hoped everyday for an evacuation," said Vladymyr Babeush, 41, an
Azovstal evacuee who worked at the plant and was among those who arrived in
Zaporizhzhia.

  "And now we are done waiting. We're so thankful to everyone involved."

  The evacuations leave a small force of defiant defenders holed up in
Azovstal's sprawling network of tunnels and bunkers.

  "We, all of the military personnel in the garrison of Mariupol, we have
witnessed the war crimes performed by Russia, by the Russian army. We are
witnesses," said Ilya Samoilenko, an intelligence officer with the far-right
Azov regiment defending the site.

  "Surrender is not an option because Russia is not interested in our lives."

  Full control of Mariupol would allow Moscow to create a land bridge between
the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, and eastern regions run by
pro-Russian separatists.

  Some have speculated that Putin is seeking to achieve that goal in time for
Victory Day.

  "The enemy is trying to finish off the defenders of Azovstal, they are
trying to do it before May 9 to give Vladimir Putin a gift," Oleksiy
Arestovych, an aide to Ukraine's president, said.

  The Russian leader has sought to legitimise his invasion of Ukraine by
comparing it with the previous struggle against Nazism and the national pride
it brought.

  "Today, our soldiers, as their ancestors, are fighting side by side to
liberate their native land from the Nazi filth with the confidence that, as
in 1945, victory will be ours," Putin said.

  Ukraine's Zelensky also marked the end of the war by comparing his
country's battle for national survival to the region's resistance against its
former Nazi occupiers.

  "Decades after World War II, darkness has returned to Ukraine, and it has
become black and white again," he said, in a monochrome social media video
shot before a bombed-out apartment block.

  "Evil has returned, in a different uniform, under different slogans, but
for the same purpose," he warned.

  - 'Shame on Russia' -

  Zelensky also met G7 leaders via video conference Sunday to discuss the
crisis.

  The group in a statement said Putin's "unprovoked war of aggression" had
brought "shame on Russia and the historic sacrifices of its people".

  The White House said the G7 was "committed to phasing out or banning the
import of Russian oil".

  But EU diplomats will meet again this week to hammer out the details of
their latest sanctions package against Moscow, after a proposed embargo on
Russian oil exposed rifts in the bloc.

  The White House also said the United States would impose sanctions on three
major Russian television stations and deny all Russian companies access to
American firms' consulting and accounting services.

  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Putin was responsible for
"heinous war crimes" as he visited Irpin, a suburb on the northwest edge of
Kyiv that was the scene of heavy fighting in the early weeks of the conflict.

  Local mayor Oleksandr Markushyn posted pictures on social media and said
Trudeau "came to Irpin to see with his own eyes all the horror that the
Russian occupiers had done to our city".

  - Battle for the east -

  On the ground, the key battles are being fought in Ukraine's east.

  In Severodonetsk, a dozen jumpy and exhausted soldiers cowering under a
bridge from incoming shellfire formed Kyiv's last line of defence against
Russia's assault on this easternmost city still held by Ukraine.

  The city's fall would grant the Kremlin de facto control of Lugansk -- the
smaller of the two republics comprising the Donbas war zone.

  A clear pattern has emerged on Ukraine's eastern front.

  Ukrainian units are counterattacking and making gains to the east of the
northern city of Kharkiv.

  The Russians, in turn, are chewing up territory roughly 100 miles (160
kilometres) to the southeast of the Ukrainian push.

  The soldiers in Severodonetsk looked too tired to put on a brave face.

  "I would rather not guess how long we can hold on. All I can say is that we
are here now," said their unit commander.

  "The best way to describe the situation? Critically stable," he said with a
sardonic laugh.