Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his troops to seal off Ukrainian defenders inside the besieged port city of Mariupol. Mr Putin told forces to abandon plans to storm the sprawling Azovstal steel works there, where Ukraine is still resisting the invaders. The Azovstal Iron and Steel Works - a massive, four sq-mile (10 sq km) plant in the south-east of the city - has become the last centre of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol. Civilians as well as fighters are inside the plant. Russian forces have been trying for weeks to dislodge them. The BBC's Toby Luckhurst in Lviv, western Ukraine, has been reporting on Mr Putin's apparent change of mind, and Ukrainian defiance. While Russia talks of isolating the Ukrainian defenders in Azovstal, they remain in contact with the outside world, describing conditions inside the huge steelworks. Captain Svyatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Battalion in the complex, told the AFP military and civilians were hiding in several basements in the complex, some of which he and his comrades were unable to reach. "We know that there are small children there as young as three-months old," he said. In recent days, Russian forces had used artillery and heavy bunker-busting bombs to try to destroy them, but all the attacks had failed, Capt Palamar said. He added that more than 500 heavily wounded fighters needed medical help, and bodies of the dead remained unburied.Read more from Capt Palamar's interview here.