An anonymous resident of Mariupol broadcast an emergency call through our antenna on Tuesday. Like thousands of other civilians, she lives a secluded life in the underworld of the Azovstal industrial site, isolated from a city that has come under Russian control. While we lack everything in this ultimate Ukrainian agglomeration enclave, she addressed her request to the international community.
Their plight is great and they are now at the center of discussions between Russia and the international community. Thousands of civilians – according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s count – are currently living in the depths of the underworld of the Azovstal industrial site, the last bastion defended by Ukrainian soldiers in a Russian-ruled city of Mariupol. Among these refugees, a woman asked for help, which was broadcast this Tuesday morning to Ukraine’s allies via our antenna.
“My country is in decline”
This woman, speaking to the camera from her basement, is anonymous, but that doesn’t matter because, after all, she says, “on behalf of everyone in Mariupol,” she decided to challenge “the whole world.” .
“Please help us… We want to live! Live in our city, our country! Normal and calm. We can’t stand these bombing raids, air raids anymore. Referring to Kremlin propaganda that presents the fall of Mariupol as the ‘liberation’ of the city, she continues: ‘But who are we being ‘liberated’ by here? I don’t understand… Help us land.”
Nothing is “saved”
Then she paints a terrible panorama: “My country is in decline, my city is completely destroyed. Everything has been destroyed, not a single square meter is spared.”
“The children here cry all the time. They want to play and live. The children ask for your help. Stop this aggression, I beg you. I’m speaking to the President of the United States, Britain, France. I appeal to Canada, Israel, Turkey. I appeal to all of you to help us. Free us and save us. How long can this torture last for our elderly, our children, our invalids?
2000 soldiers but “no fly”
And the words of the military are no less alarming than this civilian plea. As Serguiy Volyna, commander of the 38th Brigade of the National Navy, expressed himself in one of our reports: “We are perhaps living our last days and perhaps our last hours. According to Corriere della Sera, 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers are still crammed together on the sixth basement floor of the industrial conglomerate that has been completely razed to the ground.
A factory around which Vladimir Putin has ordered a passive but strict blockade so “no fly can get through,” as he said during a televised meeting with his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov last Thursday.
Timid international advances
The latter also made humanitarian pledges to the press after his meeting in Moscow on Tuesday with Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations. “We will strengthen our coordination in this work, our cooperation in humanitarian aid through concrete measures,” Sergey Lavrov promised the journalists present, adding: “We are ready to work with the United Nations, its High Commissioner for Refugees and the UN Commissariat Red Cross”.
Antonio Guterres, speaking alongside him, also mentioned this partnership to try to free civilians from the Azovstal trap. “Many residents of Mariupol need help and need to be evacuated,” he stressed, calling for “coordinated work between the UN, the Red Cross and the warring factions to evacuate from the factory civilians who want to leave the factory.”
At the moment – and after days or even weeks of negotiations between the attacker, those attacked and the observers – the refugees from Azovstal still see nothing coming. The international agenda sometimes struggles to fit into the humanitarian emergency.
Robin Verner Journalist BFMTV