The War Room: The battle for the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol is down to street-to-street fighting in the rubble as the Russians press to take the city for their first strategic victory.

  The Ukrainians had spurned a Russian deadline to surrender Mariupol. President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “Ukraine cannot fulfill ultimatums.” He said in remarks published on social media by a Ukrainian public television channel, “We simply cannot do this physically. We’ve lost people. How, how can you do this?”

  The leaders of Ukraine’s Armed Forces say that Russian troops have seized a “land corridor” with the Crimean peninsula, blocking Ukraine’s access to the Sea of Azov. But they also say that Russian forces have lost “offensive potential” and are being forced to call in reinforcements from across Russia for deployment in Ukraine. They claim that about 300 Russian soldiers were killed in combat just yesterday.

  The Russians are stymied on many fronts and are resorting to long-range missiles to destroy cities they can’t take on the ground. The US and NATO are now considering how they might respond if the Russians in desperation resort to chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons to break the stalemate.

  In Kyiv, Ukrainian forces say they have re-taken a strategically important suburb. The city itself has been rocked by explosions for the last 24 hours as the Russians seek to encircle and cut off the capital city.

  Amazingly, the Ukrainian air force is still flying and dogfighting with Russian fighter planes. The Ukrainians claim to have shot down 97 fixed-wing Russian aircraft.

  A pro-Kremlin tabloid yesterday reported that nearly 9,861 Russian troops have been killed in the war before the publication removed the report and claimed it had been hacked. The story also said that 16,153 Russian troops have been wounded in the fight, a stunning figure, if true.

  Here in the US, the Institute for the Study of War says that Russia has been forced to deploy “low quality” reserves, including “low readiness units” from Russia’s Far East, to replace losses in frontline units.

  A public opinion survey conducted March 14 and 15 by the Kyiv-based firm Info Sapiens found 91 percent of Ukrainian respondents say the country’s military will eventually beat back the Russian forces to end the invasion.

The Diplomatic Front: Russia yesterday summoned the US ambassador to Moscow and handed him a “note of protest” over President Biden’s description of Vladimir Putin as a war criminal and a thug.

  The statement from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that Biden’s remarks were “unacceptable” and that US/Russia relations could be completely severed. “It is emphasized that such statements by the American President, unworthy of a statesman of such a high rank, put Russian-American relations on the verge of breaking,” the statement read.

  The Russians and Ukrainians are still engaged in peace talks, but they are moving “much more slowly and less substantively than we would like,” the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said in his daily call with reporters.

Air Crash: A China Eastern Boeing 737 yesterday plunged 20,000 feet in a minute yesterday and crashed, killing all 132 people on board.

  No cause for the accident was immediately evident.

  The plane took off from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, in the early afternoon for a 90-minute flight east to Guangzhou. Flight trackers say the Boeing 737 was at 29,000 feet when it dropped to 8,000, appeared to be recovering, and then went down. 

Confirmation: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who’s already been through the confirmation process three times and is the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court, vowed at the opening of her hearings yesterday to be an “independent” judge, and apply the law “without fear or favor.”

  Jackson is currently a member of  the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. “I have been a judge for nearly a decade now, and I take that responsibility, and my duty to be independent, very seriously,” she said. 

  Republicans are out to make noise about Jackson, if not actual sense. Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn in a 10 minute opening statement said, “I can only wonder what’s your hidden agenda? Is it to let violent criminals, cop killers and child predators back to the streets?”

  Republicans are also still sore about the 2018 hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of being a heavy drinker and committing sexual assault when he was a teenager. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told Jackson, “No one is going to inquire about your teenage dating habits.”

Pumped Up: You may have noticed that gasoline prices aren’t dropping by much and they are not likely to. Oil prices rose sharply yesterday as Europe considers whether to match America’s ban on Russian oil. US crude rose 7 percent to $112.12 a barrel. Brent crude, the world standard, also jumped 7 percent to $115.62 a barrel.

 The Spin Rack: Former President Donald Trump and two of his business-associate children filed an appeal in their fight to stop the New York attorney general from questioning them as part of a civil investigation into the Trump Organization. —  A Texas appeals court reinstated a temporary injunction that prohibits the state from investigating parents who give gender-affirming care to their transgender children. — The City of Miami Beach has declared a state of emergency and a midnight curfew in response to a burst of spring break violence. Five people were shot over the weekend.

Ticket Punching: The former wife of Eric Greitens, a former governor and leading Republican candidate for the US Senate from Missouri, has accused him in court documents of physical abuse during their marriage. She says he knocked her down then took her keys, phone, and wallet during an argument in 2018. Greitens resigned as governor of the state amid scandal that same year. Now he thinks he’s material for the US Senate.