TOP HEADLINES

• More than 250 soldiers from the besieged Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol have surrendered to Russian forces, while Kyiv has ordered the entire garrison to evacuate, meaning one of the most deadly battles of the Ukraine conflict has come to a close. 

By surrendering, Kyiv has essentially ceded the city to Russia, marking a heavy loss for the Ukrainian side. At least seven buses carried Ukrainian fighters from the final site of the fight for Mariupol, escorted by pro-Russian troops to areas under Moscow and Russia-backed separatists' control. 

• Lawmakers in Finland have voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining NATO, paving the way for the country, along with their Nordic neighbor Sweden, to submit their bids to become members of the alliance on Wednesday. "I'm happy we have taken the same path and we can do it together," Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Tuesday at a joint presser with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto.

• But earlier, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed Turkey's opposition to the two Nordic nation's NATO bids, again accusing them of failing to take a clear stance against terrorism. However, it is expected that Ankara will acquiesce with certain promises from the 'de facto leader' of the military bloc, the U.S..

• President Vladimir Putin says the decision poses "no direct threat" to Russia, but warned that any move to expand NATO's military infrastructure there will "certainly provoke our response." 

• The EU's top diplomat Josep Borrell said that if numbers and reports are true, the Russian army has suffered "impressive losses" in Ukraine. Speaking following a meeting of European defense ministers, he said  he wouldn't "dare to make an hypothesis about how long Russia can resist."

• The EU and Hungary are negotiating financial support to Budapest so that it stops holding up the bloc's planned Russian oil embargo, but they remain split over funds. Putin on Tuesday said Europe would be committing "economic suicide" with its sanctions.

• A Russian lawmaker taking part in peace talks said Russia should consider the death penalty for what he called nationalist fighters from Ukraine's Azov regiment. After the defenders of Ukraine's Azovstal steel works surrendered, lawmaker Leonid Slutsky said although Russia has a moratorium on the death penalty, it should "think carefully" about capital punishment for the Azov fighters, accusing the brigade of "monstrous crimes against humanity." 

• At least ten people have been killed in the latest shelling in Severodonetsk in eastern Ukraine, as the city is almost surrounded by Russian troops, the Luhansk region governor Sergiy Gaiday said. A further eight were killed and 12 wounded in a Russian air strike on the village of Desna in the northern Ukrainian region of Chernihiv, the regional emergency service said.

• Ukrainian forces fired on a Russian village in the western province of Kursk just over the border on Tuesday, regional governor Roman Starovoit said. Nobody was injured in the attack, but three houses and a school were hit.

• Russia is quitting the Council of the Baltic Sea States amid raging tensions with the West over Ukraine. The organization is a political forum for regional cooperation that groups together 11 member states including Germany, Finland and Norway as well as the EU.

• Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, is looking at banning the exchange of fighters from Ukraine's ultra-nationalist Azov regiment for Russian servicemen. TASS news agency quoted Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin as saying "Nazi criminals" should not be exchanged.

• EU foreign ministers have failed to pressure Hungary to lift its veto of a proposed oil embargo on Russia, with Lithuania saying the bloc was being "held hostage by one member state." The ban on crude imports proposed by the European Commission in early May would be its harshest sanction yet. "Unhappily, it has not been possible to reach an agreement today," EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said, argung that Hungary set out its argument based on economic, not political, concerns.

• Ukraine is making progress in developing grain exports over land to the EU but will need to regain sea access blocked by Russia's offensive to avert a worsening crisis for food importing countries, its deputy economy minister has said. Ukraine previously exported up to 6 million tonnes per month through sea ports that have been closed since February, the severity of the situation leading UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to weigh in. 

Mariupol falls

Dozens of Ukrainian fighters, some apparently unwounded, surrendered on Tuesday after weeks holed up in the bunkers and tunnels below Mariupol's Azovstal steel works, signaling the end of one of the most deadly battles of the Ukraine conflict.

The evacuation of hundreds of fighters, many wounded, to Russian-held towns, likely marks the end of the longest and bloodiest battle of the Ukraine conflict. It also means Kyiv has essentially ceded control of the strategic port city to Russia, a major blow to Ukraine's campaign.

"The 'Mariupol' garrison has fulfilled its combat mission," the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said in a statement.

"The supreme military command ordered the commanders of the units stationed at Azovstal to save the lives of the personnel ... Defenders of Mariupol are the heroes of our time," it added.

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"We hope that we will be able to save the lives of our guys," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an early morning address. "There are severely wounded ones among them. They're receiving care. Ukraine needs Ukrainian heroes alive."

Russian forces had hit Mariupol, a major port on the Sea of Azov between Russia and Crimea, with artillery strikes for weeks, following some of the fiercest urban warfare of the conflict, which left much of the city devastated.

Civilians and hundreds of Ukrainian fighters, many of them from the Azov Regiment, sought refuge in the Azovstal works, a vast Soviet-era plant founded under Josef Stalin and designed with a maze of bunkers and tunnels to withstand nuclear attack.

At least seven buses were seen carrying troops from Azovstal arrive in Novoazovsk late on Monday. In one, marked with Z like many Russian military vehicles in Ukraine, men were stacked on stretchers on three levels. 

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar said 53 injured troops from the steelworks were taken to a hospital in the Russian-controlled town of Novoazovsk, some 32 km (20 miles) to the east, while another 211 people were taken to the town of Olenivka, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

All of the evacuees will be subject to a potential prisoner exchange with Russia, she added.

About 600 troops were believed to have been inside the steel plant. Ukraine's military said efforts were under way to evacuate those still inside.

Moscow has characterized the Azov Regiment as one of the main perpetrators of the alleged radical anti-Russian nationalism and Nazism from which it says it needs to protect Ukraine's Russian-speakers.

The Kremlin said the combatants would be treated in line with international norms, while Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar posted a video in which she said: "An exchange procedure will take place for their return home."

However, Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, Russia's lower house, said: "Nazi criminals should not be exchanged."

Lawmaker Leonid Slutsky, one of Russia's negotiators in talks with Ukraine, called the evacuated combatants "animals in human form" and said they should receive the death penalty. 

"They do not deserve to live after the monstrous crimes against humanity that they have committed and that are committed continuously against our prisoners," he said.