Mariupol’s mayor said he lost contact on Wednesday with the city’s last Ukrainian defenders amid heavy fighting at the Azovstal steel plant.

The final pocket of Ukrainian resistance has held out for weeks in the crucial southeastern port city, which is otherwise under Russian control. A first group of evacuees from the site reached safety on Tuesday, but fears have been growing for those still trapped after Ukrainian officials said Russian forces had launched a fresh assault on the stronghold.

“Unfortunately, heavy fighting in our fortress continues. But there are still hundreds of peaceful civilians there. There are more than 30 children who wait to be rescued, ” Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko said on Ukrainian TV.

Mariupol has been besieged for months, with swaths of the city reduced to rubble while its remaining residents suffered without aid. Ukrainian forces have been holed up in the sprawling steel plant alongside civilians sheltering from Russian bombardment.

The overturn of Roe v. Wade, possibly presaged this week in the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion, would be a development of enormous political and social consequence. Most fundamentally, however, such a ruling could almost immediately trigger tectonic change in the health and well-being of birthing people and children across the country.

We know this due to important research published in 2020 that compared the fates of women who were forced to carry pregnancies to term versus those who were provided abortions. The influential Turnaway Study, as it’s commonly referred to, found that, among other things, women who were denied an abortion endured more serious pregnancy complications, more chronic pain, and more short-term anxiety.

The Supreme Court’s decision is not final: Opinions go through many drafts, and, in theory, some of the justices could still change their minds before handing down their final decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Yet if the court were to issue a ruling along the lines of what Justice Samuel Alito has drafted — as published this week by Politico — more than 20 states are expected to immediately ban abortion in most cases, with half of those having “trigger laws” already on their books (meaning abortion bans that would take effect almost immediately if Roe were overturned). In an instant, a common medical service that has been constitutionally protected for nearly half a century would be outlawed in almost half the country.

The European Union is proposing to ban all oil imports from Russia by the end of the year and remove the country’s biggest bank, Sberbank, from the SWIFT international payments network.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday the measures would form part of a sixth round of sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

“We now propose a ban on Russian oil,” she said during a speech to the European Parliament. “Let’s be clear: it will not be easy. But we simply have to work on it. We will make sure that we phase out Russian oil in an orderly fashion, to maximize pressure on Russia, while minimizing the impact on our own economies.”

Crude oil supply would be phased out within six months, and imports of refined oil products by the end of 2022, she added.