The devastating images from the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol are a grim harbinger of what is to come as Russia’s onslaught on the country drags on, experts and officials say.
Heavy shelling in the city has left most remaining residents hiding in basements and foreign journalists fleeing a so-called “absolute hellscape” of bombing and rubble.
But with fierce fighting that has stalled in most of the eastern part of the country, officials and experts fear Mariupol could be an indicator of what’s to come for other major Ukrainian cities.
“That’s pretty clear [the Russians] have not achieved the goals they had in mind when they launched this invasion,” former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told The Hill. “There’s obviously a lot of stalling and so the real question is what does the next phase look like? And it appears to be a siege…lots of rockets and artillery trying to level a lot of cities and trying to wear down the Ukrainians with this kind of constant bombardment.”
The Kremlin’s military has become bogged down in Ukraine after more than 150,000 troops were deployed to the country as of February 24. Moscow attempted to quickly overthrow the Kyiv government, but met stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces, who employed hit-and-run tactics and Western-supplied weapons.
As the war enters its fifth week, Russian troops have taken Cherson, Melitopol and Berdyansk, but made little progress towards Kyiv. They are also struggling with dwindling supplies of food and fuel, little to no reinforcements, and even frostbite due to a lack of proper cold-weather gear, according to the Pentagon.
Now that NATO estimates up to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed – including six generals – Putin’s forces are turning to bombing and heavy shelling cities from afar.
The Pentagon estimates that the Russians are “almost desperately” trying to turn the tide of the war in their favor, a senior defense official told reporters Monday. This likely means an increase in long-range missile and artillery bombardments.
The Russians have fired more than 1,200 rockets at Ukraine over the past 28 days of the war, an average of about 43 a day.
“This is what becomes so much more dangerous for civilians,” they added. “The more you use long-range fire – and this isn’t a military known for precision – the more you’ll hit civilian targets, the more you’ll hit residential areas, the more you’ll kill innocent people.”
That death and destruction is on full display in Mariupol, amid fierce fighting as Ukrainians refuse to abandon the port city.
The world watched in horror as Russia bombed a theater there on March 16 where hundreds of civilians were taking shelter. A week earlier, his troops bombed a maternity and children’s hospital.
Hundreds of thousands are believed to be trapped in the city with no access to heat, food or water. Satellite images of Mariupol, which had a population of 400,000 before the war, show widespread destruction in its residential areas.
The last confirmation of civilian deaths in the city was on March 14, when the Mariupol City Council said about 2,400 people had been killed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday the city would be “reduced to ashes,” and on Tuesday the Mariupol Municipal Council said Russia was turning the city into a “dead land.”
“Once again it is clear that the occupiers have no interest in the city of Mariupol. They want to raze it to the ground and make it the ashes of a dead country,” the council said in a statement.
Across Ukraine, key infrastructure was damaged and destroyed, including 10 hospitals, and other facilities have limited medicines and supplies, which are struggling to replenish supplies due to nearby fighting, Ukraine’s Health Minister Viktor Lyashko said on Tuesday .
The World Health Organization on Wednesday confirmed 64 attacks on health facilities in Ukraine since the war began.
In Pavlohrad – a key freight hub and crossing point for Ukraine’s rail system with links to front-line fighting – a Russian missile hit and destroyed the train station on Tuesday.
Schools and shopping malls have also become a prime target, as have residential buildings, nearly 1,000 of which were destroyed in Kharkiv, the mayor said on Wednesday.
The atrocities have prompted the US government to officially declare that members of the Russian armed forces committed war crimes in Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said
Antony BlinkenRussian journalist killed by shelling in Kyiv Defense and National Security – US says Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine.
The bombings have also caused more than 3.5 million Ukrainians to flee abroad, with about twice as many displaced within the country.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday Russia’s invasion “is going nowhere fast” and urged Moscow to end its “unwinnable” war as the Ukrainian people suffer “hell on earth.”
“The only result of all this is more suffering, more destruction and more horror as far as the eye can see,” Guterres said in a televised address.
And the longer the conflict lasts, the higher the risk that the war will spill over to NATO countries, Panetta added.
Several minor spillover incidents have already taken place, including earlier this month when four Russian warplanes violated Swedish airspace. Days earlier, a drone carrying a bomb crashed in Croatia after flying more than 350 miles over Ukraine’s western border. It is unclear whether it came from Ukrainian or Russian forces. Other drones from the conflict have also entered the airspace of Romania and Poland.
“It’s a very dangerous situation,” said Panetta. “It doesn’t take much for this conflict to suddenly escalate into a major war — either through a missile going astray, or through a misjudgment or a stupid decision.”