Hundreds of people fled Mariupol through a humanitarian corridor for the second day in a row on Tuesday, but Ukrainian officials told Reuters that those who fled were only a small part of the 200,000 people stranded in the city and in need of urgent help. Russian forces continue to block a much-needed humanitarian aid convoy, according to Ukrainian officials.
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As conditions in the city grow dire and the death toll skyrockets, rumors of a humanitarian disaster are seeping through intermittent phone calls, tentatively filmed videos, Associated Press journalists and testimonies from several aid groups still working in the city.
“People in Mariupol lived through a week-long nightmare of life and death,” said Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose staff is trapped in the city. ICRC officials have warned that time is running out for the remaining civilians.
Some of the most heartbreaking pictures of the city have been taken by ordinary citizens using mobile phones.
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“There is a real meat grinder in the center of the city: this land is saturated with blood, bitterness and despair,” one Mariupol resident said in a video posted online on Sunday. The video showed empty streets, blocks with broken windows, and shops looted by starving citizens. He lingered on men cooking dinner over a campfire in a city that has endured sub-zero temperatures and almost two weeks without heating or running water.
“The world doesn’t know what’s going on here,” the narrator said as he passed the ruined buildings. “It’s horrible.”
A man walks through Mariupol, Ukraine, March 13, describing how residents are struggling after almost two weeks without electricity, heat, water or communications. (Twitter)
Of major concern to military analysts is that Mariupol could give a glimpse of what will happen in other Ukrainian cities, such as Kyiv, as the war continues. “We’re trying to understand destruction, but the truth is that it’s an integral part of how the Russians fight,” said Rita Konaev, urban combat expert and deputy director of analysis at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technologies. “We hear all the time that Ukraine is not like Syria or not like Chechnya. In Mariupol, we will find out that this is not true.”
Even under the best of circumstances, urban warfare is a bloody business that takes the heaviest toll on civilians caught in the crossfire. According to Konaev, the Russian version of urban fighting in recent decades has proven to be especially brutal. Due to their huge logistical problems and seemingly low morale, Russian forces have struggled to capture major Ukrainian cities. However, Russian forces still have aircraft and artillery pieces to raze them to the ground. It appears that the Russians are increasingly using their massive firepower advantage — especially in Mariupol — to depopulate and then overrun Ukraine’s urban centers.
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“It is easier to claim victory over rubble than resistance,” Konaev said, summarizing the Russian approach.
Damage to civilian infrastructure in Mariupol
Bombed and
looted shops
local department
The State Emergency Service was destroyed
Large crater after a missile strike
Damage in
city
Centre
Children’s Hospital and
maternity hospital blown up
Destruction of Priazovsky
State Technical University
Sources: European Space Agency (satellite image taken March 14); The Washington Post and the Center for Information Sustainability
Damage to civilian infrastructure
in Mariupol
Bombed and
looted shops
The local department of the State Emergency Service was destroyed
Large crater after a missile strike
Damage in
city center
Destruction of Priazovsky
State Technical University
Children’s Hospital and
maternity hospital blown up
Sources: European Space Agency (satellite image taken March 14); The Washington Post and the Center for Information Sustainability
Damage to civilian infrastructure in Mariupol
Bombed and
looted shops
The local department of the State Emergency Service was destroyed
Large crater after a missile strike
Damage in
city center
Destruction of Priazovsky
State Technical University
Children’s Hospital and
maternity hospital blown up
Sources: European Space Agency (satellite image taken March 14); The Washington Post and the Center for Information Sustainability
Damage to civilian infrastructure in Mariupol
Bombed and looted stores
The local department of the State Emergency Service was destroyed
big crater after
missile strike
Damage in
city center
Children’s hospital and maternity hospital blown up
Destruction of the Azov State Technical University
Sources: European Space Agency (satellite image taken March 14); The Washington Post and the Center for Information Sustainability
In Mariupol, where Russian troops bombed a maternity hospital last week, the results were particularly devastating, creating some of the most searing images of the war. Among them were personnel from the Ministry of Emergency Situations and volunteers carrying a seriously wounded woman on a stretcher from a bombed-out hospital. “Kill me now!” The woman is said to have screamed when she realized she was losing her baby, according to the Associated Press, whose journalists are still in the city.
A few days later, the surgeon who fought to save her told Ukrainian television from Mariupol that both she and her unborn child had died after desperate attempts to resuscitate them. Those two lives have been added to the death toll, which is rising at an alarming rate, according to Ukrainian officials. The city council reported that 1,582 civilians were killed in the first 12 days of fighting in Mariupol. Over the past four days, another 1,000 civilians have been killed, bringing the death toll to over 2,500, Oleksii Arestovich, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, told Reuters. News agencies with limited access to Mariupol were unable to confirm the final figures.
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Numerous strikes were carried out in the vicinity of the maternity hospital, resulting in the destruction of apartment buildings, government buildings and parts of the technical university. In many areas, the bomb blast left craters at least 20 feet deep.
To survive, Mariupol residents have resorted to cutting down trees for firewood, melting snow and hacking heating systems in search of drinking water, aid groups with staff in the city say. Most supermarkets have been stripped of all remaining food.
“The noises of war do not stop. Buildings hit, shrapnel flying everywhere,” Sasha Volkov, head of the ICRC in Mariupol, said in a statement. “Every resident of the city faces such a situation.”
On a rare call from a city where cell phones are intermittent at best, a Mariupol official made a similar note in a brief interview with NPR: “It’s just awful. Now it is completely destroyed,” he said. “It’s more like ruins from a period film about World War II.”
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An Associated Press photographer took a picture of a Russian tank firing at an apartment building that exploded in orange flames.
The big remaining question is why the Russians chose to concentrate so much artillery and suffering in Mariupol, which is 35 miles from the Russian border and has for years been dependent on its neighbor’s close relationships and heavy traffic.
“No one in their right mind thinks this war can be resolved with a complete victory for one side or the other,” said Olga Oliker, program director for the International Crisis Group, in a recent discussion posted online. “They’re fighting for the negotiating table.”
“So far, Mariupol is an exception,” said Rob Lee, a former Marine Corps officer and Russian defense specialist at the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies. Lee suggested that the presence of the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian armed group with a reputation for being fearless in combat and cutting ties to the far right, could be the driving force behind Russia’s campaign to retake the city.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin baselessly claimed that he had invaded Ukraine to “denazify” a country run by a Jewish president. Killing or capturing members of the Azov Battalion could be a major public relations victory for Putin, Li said, to justify the loss of Russian soldiers in an increasingly unwinnable war.
To this end, Mariupol is one of the few places where Russian troops have invaded the city and engaged in direct urban combat with the Ukrainian military.
A video filmed on March 10 in Mariupol shows a massive sinkhole in the city center. (Telegram)
Despite the massacre and suffering in Mariupol, military analysts warn that the situation could worsen further. In Chechnya, Russian troops fired up to 30,000 artillery shells at Grozny in one day, said John Spencer, a retired Army major and chairman of urban warfare research at the Madison Policy Forum. In Syria, large sections of Aleppo have become uninhabitable.
Until now, Russian forces have not unleashed so much firepower on a Ukrainian city.
“Watching how the Russians wage wars over the years, I understand that this is far from all that they are capable of,” said Oliker of the International Crisis Group. “They can do a lot more if they actually let go and attack civilian areas.”