There are some incredible stories emerging out of the south of Ukraine, despite Russia’s success in seizing many parts of southern Ukraine.

Dr Sonia Mycak, a research fellow of Ukrainian Studies Foundation at ANU, says the situation is Mariupol is particularly alarming.

“The damage being inflicted on the city of Mariupol is cruel and catastrophic,” she told Sofie Formica.

“No food and water now for 10 days, no electricity, no communication, we’ve got footage of local Ukrainians having to bury their dead in mass graves.

“And in fact just yesterday, the mayor’s office of that city said they think the death count will be more like 20,000 people.

“Mariupol is being bombarded from the air every 30 minutes and the humanitarian corridors that the Russians are supposedly promising are being laid with mines, with land mines, and the buses trying to ship in food and water are being bombarded.”

She says the Ukrainians remain resolute as they fight against the Russian invasion.

“The Ukrainian defence is not waning, not waning at all,” she said.

“And in fact, we see in the south of Ukraine, where they are what we call temporarily occupied territories, so in the south of Ukraine, the Russians have had some success in kind of encircling and moving in to the centre of the towns and cities … even though the Russians troops are there and they have actually kidnapped the leaders, the mayors in those places, the Ukrainians themselves are coming out on the streets in numbers of like 5000, 10,000 people.

“These are people who are unarmed walking out in front of tanks and soldiers who are aiming at them and saying ‘We will fire if you don’t disperse’. They are coming out with Ukrainian flags, they are coming out saying, ‘You can come here with your tanks, but we will never ever be Russian, we will never be part of you’.”

Press PLAY below to hear more about how Ukrainians are fighting back