Joanna Kakissis

Several actors who survived the Russian bombing of a theater in Mariupol are now in Ukraine's far west. They went back on stage over the weekend for the first time since the war began.

Ukrainian officials promise to rebuild and revitalize Mariupol - which Russian forces have destroyed and now occupy. Some who fled the city doubt they will ever return.

Hundreds of civilians were sheltering in the drama theater during the March siege of Mariupol, the southern Ukrainian port city that Russian troops destroyed and now occupy.

A Russian soldier's forgotten body is discovered in a liberated village north of Kyiv, setting off emotions and an inquest — as Russia refuses to acknowledge many of its war dead.

Ukraine has very liberal abortion laws. In Poland, it is almost entirely illegal. Millions of Ukrainians discovered this when they fled the war in their home country and crossed the Polish border.

Belarusians who see their country's fate as linked to Ukraine's victory are joining an anti-Kremlin resistance that includes activists, ex-spies and a Belarusian brigade fighting for Ukraine.

More than a thousand soldiers were evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant, and Russia is consolidating control of Mariupol. It is making plans to annex the southwestern parts of the country.

It's unclear if the soldiers have been taken prisoner or are under the protection of the U.N., but a Ukrainian official says they would be able to return home after a prisoner exchange with Russia.

Ukraine has won the Eurovision Song Contest, perhaps Europe's biggest musical competition. NPR's Joanna Kakissis was watching with Ukrainians in Dnipro.

And in Mariupol, women, children and elderly civilians have been evacuated from the steel mill. Officials continue to work on humanitarian corridors for the rest of the city.

In the catacombs of a steel plant in Mariupol, Ukrainian soldiers stage a last stand against Russian occupation as their wives plead with aid groups to evacuate them along with civilians.

The final battle for Mariupol is taking place inside the Azovstal steel plant, a massive coastal complex in the besieged city. Hundreds of civilians are still trapped inside, officials say.

"Like the apocalypse, like a horror film," is how one evacuee describes weeks of sheltering in the vast, Soviet-era steel plant. Her daughter says, "Each day felt like it would be our last one alive."

More civilians are being evacuated Monday from a steel facility in Mariupol, Ukraine. But thousands of soldiers remain, many of whom are injured and have been holed up for weeks.

Heavy fighting continues in the north and south of Ukraine. The U.N. Secretary General was in Kyiv this week to try to set up evacuation routes from the besieged city of Mariupol.

A Polish farming town on the Ukrainian border has organized weekly shipments of protective equipment to exhausted Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline.

It was seen as a way for Russia to prop up its currency and retaliate for Western sanctions, but it could cause global energy prices to spike. One analyst sees it as a warning to the rest of Europe.

Russia's state-run gas company has cut supplies to Poland and Bulgaria. At the heart of this move: the war in Ukraine, the sanctions imposed by the West, and Russia's attempts to wriggle free of them.

The move was widely seen as an effort to prop up the ruble and strike back at Europe amid an onslaught of Western penalties levied against Russian banks.

Spooked by reports that traffickers are waiting at the Ukraine-Poland border, a Polish woman started an all-women car service to drive Ukrainian refugee women and children to homes or shelters.