KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an order Wednesday to fast track Russian citizenship for residents of parts of southern Ukraine largely held by his forces, while lawmakers in Moscow passed a bill to strengthen the stretched Russian army.

Putin’s decree applying to the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions could allow Russia to strengthen its hold on territory that lies between eastern Ukraine, where Moscow-backed separatists occupy some areas, and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014.

The Russian army is engaged in an intense battle for Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, known as the Donbas. In a sign that the Kremlin is trying to bolster its stretched military machine, Russian lawmakers agreed to scrap the age limit of 40 for those signing their first voluntary military contracts.

A description of the bill on the parliament website indicated older recruits would be allowed to operate precision weapons or serve in engineering or medical positions. The chair of the Russian parliament’s defense committee, Andrei Kartapolov, said the measure would make it easier to hire people with “in-demand” skills.

Russian officials say only volunteer contract soldiers are sent to fight in Ukraine, although they acknowledge that some conscripts were put into the fighting by mistake in the early stages of the war.

Three months into Russia’s invasion, Putin visited a military hospital in Moscow on Wednesday and met with some soldiers wounded in Ukraine, the Kremlin said in a statement.

It was his first known visit with soldiers fighting in Ukraine since he launched the war on Feb. 24. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has visited wounded soldiers, civilians and children — including at times when Russian troops were fighting on the outskirts of Kyiv.

A reporter for the state-run Russia1 TV channel posted a video clip on Telegram showing Putin in a white medical coat talking to a man in hospital attire, presumably a soldier.

The man, filmed from behind standing up and with no visible wounds, tells Putin that he has a son. The president, accompanied by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, responds: “He will be proud of his father,” before shaking the man’s hand.

Zelenskyy reiterated Wednesday that he would be willing to negotiate with Putin directly but said Moscow needs to retreat to the positions it held before the invasion and must show it’s ready to “shift from the bloody war to diplomacy.”

“I believe it would be a correct step for Russia to make,” Zelenskyy told leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, by video link.

He also said Ukraine wants to drive Russian troops out of all captured areas. “Ukraine will fight until it reclaims all its territories,” Zelenskyy said. “It’s about our independence and our sovereignty.”

In his nightly address to the nation, Zelenskyy strongly rebuffed those in the West who suggest Ukraine cede control of areas occupied by Russian troops for the sake of reaching a peace agreement.

Those “great geopoliticians” who suggest this are disregarding the interests of ordinary Ukrainians — “the millions of those who actually live on the territory that they propose exchanging for an illusion of peace,” he said. “We always have to think of the people and remember that values are not just words.”

Zelenskyy compared those who argue for giving Russia a piece of Ukraine to those who in 1938 agreed to cede territory to Hitler in hopes of preventing World War II.

Russia already had a program to expedite the naturalization of people living in Luhansk and Donetsk, the two eastern Ukraine provinces that make up the Donbas and where the Moscow-backed separatists hold large areas as self-declared independent republics.

During a visit to the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions last week, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin indicated they could become part of “our Russian family.”

A Russia-installed official in the Kherson region has predicted the region would become part of Russia. An official in Zaporizhzhia said Wednesday that the region’s pro-Kremlin administration would seek that as well.

Melitopol, the Zaporizhzhia region’s second-largest city, plans to start issuing Russian passports in the near future, said the Russia-installed acting mayor, Galina Danilchenko.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who attended the Davos forum in person, called for friendly countries — particularly the United States — to provide Ukraine with multiple launch rocket systems so it could try to recapture lost territory.

“Every day of someone sitting in Washington, Berlin, Paris and other capitals, and considering whether they should or should not do something, costs us lives and territories,” Kuleba said.

Zelenskyy said his army was facing the fiercest attack possible in the east by Russian forces, which in some places have many more weapons and soldiers. He pleaded for even more military assistance from the West, “without exception, without restrictions. Enough to win.”

The governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai, accused Russia of targeting shelters where civilians were hiding in the city of Sievierodonetsk.

“The situation is serious,” Haidai said in a written response to questions from The Associated Press. “The city is constantly being shelled with every possible weapon in the enemy’s possession.”

Sievierodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk are the largest remaining towns held by Ukraine in Luhansk. The region is “more than 90%” controlled by Russia, Haidai said, adding that a key supply route for Kyiv’s troops was coming under pressure despite stiff Ukrainian resistance.

Haidai said the road between Lysychansk and the city of Bakhmut to the southwest was “constantly being shelled” and that Russian sabotage and reconnaissance teams were approaching.

The governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said four civilians were injured when two rockets hit the town of Pokrovsk early Wednesday.

One strike left a crater at least three meters (10 feet) deep, with the remnants of what appeared to be a rocket still smoldering. A row of low terraced houses near the strike suffered significant damage.

“There’s no place to live in left. Everything is smashed,” Viktoria Kurbonova, a mother of two who lived in one of the terraced houses, said.

An earlier strike about a month ago blew out the windows, which were replaced with plastic sheeting. Kurbonova thinks that probably saved their lives since there was no glass flying around.

In other developments, Russia said the strategic Ukrainian port of Mariupol was functional again following a nearly three-month siege that ended with the surrender last week of the last Ukrainian fighters holed up in a giant steel plant. Russia now has full control of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the separatists in Donetsk planned to set up a tribunal to put the fighters on trial and that Moscow welcomes the action.

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Story: Ricardo Mazalan. Elena Becatoros in Pokrovsk, Ukraine, and Jamey Keaten in Davos, Switzerland, contributed to this report.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Workers digging through the rubble of an apartment building in Mariupol found 200 bodies in the basement, Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday, as more horrors come to light in the ruined city that has seen some of the worst suffering of the 3-month-old war.

The bodies were decomposing and the stench hung over the neighborhood, said Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor. He did not say when they were discovered, but the sheer number of victims makes it one of the deadliest known attacks of the war.

Heavy fighting, meanwhile, was reported in the Donbas, the eastern industrial heartland that Moscow’s forces are intent on seizing. Russian troops took over an industrial town that hosts a thermal power station, and intensified efforts to encircle and capture Sievierodonetsk and other cities.

Twelve people were killed by Russian shelling in the Donetsk region of the Donbas, according to the regional governor. And the governor of the Luhansk region of the Donbas said the area is facing its “most difficult time” in the eight years since separatist fighting erupted there.

“The Russians are advancing in all directions at the same time. They brought over an insane number of fighters and equipment,” the governor, Serhii Haidai, wrote on Telegram. “The invaders are killing our cities, destroying everything around.” He added that Luhansk is becoming “like Mariupol.”

Mariupol was relentlessly pounded during a nearly three-month siege that ended last week after some 2,500 Ukrainian fighters abandoned a steel plant where they had made their stand. Russian forces already held the rest of the city, where an estimated 100,000 people remain out a prewar population of 450,000, many of them trapped during the encirclement with little food, water, heat or electricity.

At least 21,000 people were killed in the siege, according to Ukrainian authorities, who have accused Russia of trying to cover up the horrors by bringing in mobile cremation equipment and by burying the dead in mass graves.

During the assault on Mariupol, Russian airstrikes hit a maternity hospital and a theater where civilians were taking shelter. An Associated Press investigation found that close to 600 people died in the theater attack, double the figure estimated by Ukrainian authorities.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russians of waging “total war” and seeking to inflict as much death and destruction as possible on his country.

“Indeed, there has not been such a war on the European continent for 77 years,” Zelensky said, referring to end of World War II.

Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces in the Donbas for eight years and hold large swaths of territory. Sievierodonetsk and neighboring cities are the only part of the Donbas’ Luhansk region still under Ukrainian government control.

Russian forces have achieved “some localized successes” despite strong Ukrainian resistance along dug-in positions, British military authorities said.

Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces in the region are facing a difficult situation.

“Practically the full might of the Russian army, whatever they have left, is being thrown at the offensive there,” Zelenskyy said late Tuesday in his nightly address to the nation. “Liman, Popasna, Sievierodonetsk, Slaviansk — the occupiers want to destroy everything there.”

In the Donetsk region, Moscow’s troops took over the industrial town of Svitlodarsk, which hosts a thermal power station and had a prewar population of about 11,000, and raised the Russian flag there.

“They have now hung their rag on the local administration building,” Serhii Goshko, the head of the local Ukrainian military administration, told Ukraine’s Vilny Radio, in a reference to the Russian flag. Goshko said armed units were patrolling Svitlodarsk’s streets, checking residents’ documents.

Russian troops also shelled the eastern city of Slovyansk with cluster munitions, hitting a private building, according to Mayor Vadym Lyakh. He said casualties were avoided because many people had already left their homes, and he urged the remaining residents to evacuate west. Heavy fighting was also underway in the city of Lyman.

Amid the fighting, two top Russian officials appeared to acknowledge that Moscow’s advance has been slower than expected, though they vowed the offensive would achieve its goals.

Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council. said the Russian government “is not chasing deadlines.” And Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told a meeting of a Russia-led security alliance of former Soviet states that Moscow is deliberately slowing down its offensive to allow residents of encircled cities to evacuate — though forces have repeatedly hit civilian targets.

Hours later, Zelenskyy mocked Shoigu’s assertion.

“Well, after three months of searching for an explanation for why they were unable to break Ukraine in three days, they couldn’t think of anything better than to say that’s what they planned,” he said in his video address.

Russian officials also announced that Moscow’s forces had finished clearing mines from the waters off Mariupol and that a safe corridor will open Wednesday for the exit of as many as 70 foreign ships from Ukraine’s southern coast.

In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, there were signs of recovery after weeks of bombardment. Residents formed long lines to receive rations of flour, pasta, sugar and others staples this week. Moscow’s forces withdrew from around Kharkiv earlier this month, pulling back toward the Russian border in the face of Ukrainian counterattacks, though Russia continues to shell the area from afar, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday.

Galina Kolembed, the aid distribution center coordinator, said that more and more people are returning to the city. Kolembed said the center is providing food to over 1,000 people every day, a number that keeps growing.

“Many of them have small kids, and they spend their money on the kids, so they need some support with food,” she said.

Meanwhile, the wife of the top commander who held out inside the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol said Tuesday that she had a brief telephone conversation with her husband, who surrendered to the Russians and was taken prisoner last week.

Kateryna Prokopenko, who is married to Azov Regiment leader Denys Prokopenko, said the call broke off before he could say anything about himself.

She said the call was made possible under an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, mediated by the Red Cross.

Prokopenko and Yuliia Fedosiuk, the wife of another soldier, said several families received calls in the past two days. The women said they are hopeful the soldiers will not be tortured and will eventually “come back home.”

Denis Pushilin, the leader of the Moscow-backed separatists in the Donetsk region, told the Russian Interfax agency that preparations are underway for a trial of captured Ukrainian soldiers, including the Mariupol defenders.

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Story: Elena Becatoros, Oleksandr Stashevskyi and Ricardo Mazalan. Becatoros reported from Kramatorsk, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Andrea Rosa in Kharkiv, Danica Kirka in London and other AP staffers around the world contributed.