Speaking via blurry video link, the deputy mayor of Mariupol on Wednesday painted a grim picture of life and death in his besieged city.
A week ago, Russian troops surrounded Mariupol. They have been shelling it “continuously” ever since, Sergei Orlov told the Guardian and other foreign media.
“They used aircraft, artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, hailstones and other types of weapons that we don’t even know about. It’s not just treacherous. This is a war crime and pure genocide,” he said.
He added: “Vladimir Putin wants to capture Mariupol at any cost.”
As evidence, Orlov cited a list of civilian objects that, according to him, have so far been “destroyed.” These included numerous residential buildings, Mariupol Maternity Hospital No. 9 with 600 beds, the main administrative building, and the giant Avostal city steel plant, which once employed 11,000 people.
He said that 1,170 people were killed. On Wednesday, public utilities buried 47 dead in a mass grave.
“We were unable to identify them all,” Orlov said. The message from Moscow was frighteningly clear, he suggested: “Putin intends to destroy Ukraine in order to have a Ukraine without Ukrainians.”
According to him, Putin’s goals were advancing at a terrifying pace. The city has spent the last eight days without heat, electricity, gas or electricity. Russians parked in tanks and armored personnel carriers on the coastal outskirts of Mariupol bombed all 15 power lines, Orlov said. On Monday, the gas connection was blown up.
“We sent a team of workers to repair the line. The Russians immediately fired on them. They had to leave,” he said.
Consequently, the city’s 400,000 inhabitants lived in frosty “medieval conditions” unthinkable in what until two weeks ago was a modern and “prosperous” city with lively cafes and restaurants.
“Now civilians can only cook on an open fire. People fight over firewood. They are happy that it is cold and snowing. Snow means they have something to drink.
“A six-year-old girl died of dehydration,” Orlov went on bitterly. “This is Europe in 2022. How can this happen? He added: “Many areas are devastated. They’re dropping half-ton bombs from the sky.”
Mariupol is one of several Ukrainian cities where Russia has promised to open so-called humanitarian corridors. In reality, it was the other way around, Orlov said. Over the past five days, Russia has shelled the agreed route and even mined the road. A new checkpoint had been set up, he said, making it impossible to evacuate to Zaporozhye, a city in the west under Ukrainian control.
According to the vice-mayor, about 200 thousand people wanted to leave Mariupol. Authorities could only transport 2,000 to 3,000 residents a day on a battered fleet of 21 municipal buses, he said. The Russians flattened the rest. They targeted the evacuation rally points, and the citizens were understandably reluctant to leave their hiding places.
According to him, Putin’s apparent dream of a “Russian world” without Ukrainians was the product of a “sick imagination.”
He noted that Mariupol has always been a multicultural city, home to Ukrainians and Russian speakers, as well as ethnic Greeks and Armenians. They were all citizens of Ukraine, he said, adding that no one cares what language you speak.
“Half of those killed in Russian bombings are Ukrainians of Russian origin. This is Putin’s “world,” he said sardonically. According to him, the Ukrainian army will defend Mariupol to the last man. If it eventually falls, it will become a “ghost place,” he predicted, adding: “There is no Russian Mariupol. It will be a desert.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from Kyiv tweeted photos of Wednesday’s airstrike on a Mariupol maternity hospital and said people and children were lying under the rubble. The Guardian was unable to verify this claim, but a video released by the Associated Press shows that there were several injured at the scene of the attack on the hospital.
Zelenskiy reiterated his call – hitherto rejected by NATO – for the immediate creation of a no-fly zone in the skies over Ukraine. He wrote that the world was “losing its humanity”.
Mariupol. A direct strike by Russian troops on the maternity hospital. People, children under the rubble. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky now! Stop killing! You have power, but you seem to be losing your humanity. pic.twitter.com/FoaNdbKH5k
— Vladimir Zelensky (@ZelenskyyUa) March 9, 2022
Other photos taken from inside Mariupol over the past two days confirm that a humanitarian catastrophe is underway and the EU, US and UK seem to be unable to do anything.
They depict blackened and ruined apartment buildings, some of which are still smoldering; burnt cars; and streets littered with rubbish. Bodies lay on sidewalks covered with carpets or sheets.
Local authorities still control the city center. The heaviest shelling took place in the western areas closest to Russian forces, including the Primorsky district and the port area, where Ukraine’s small Azov navy was once based. When there was little food left, desperate civilians began to rob shops, break glass and climb into windows.
The city distributed bottled water to women and children. Orlov said formula supplies had run out and about 3,000 children were left unattended. Families sleep in freezing cellars. Some residents can charge mobile phones from city council generators. But for most, contact with the outside world has ceased.
Anzhela Timchenko, a resident of Mariupol, wrote on Facebook that “there is no electricity, communication, gas, medical care and food. Looting is on the rise. There are crazy moms looking for food and diapers. Let’s help each other whenever possible.”
She added: “Yesterday I was in the city. Bonfires were burning near all the houses and food was being prepared … Everyone who left our children to die will burn in hell. I heard a little boy ask his mother: “Will the rockets explode today?”
Timchenko said she had lost 3.5 kg and was running back and forth from her apartment on the eighth floor of the Mariupol building where she lived with her family. “The child understands that if you raise your voice a little, we need to run for cover,” she wrote poignantly.
A few days ago, activist Anatoly Lozar described conditions in Mariupol as “hellish.” According to him, the city became the new Stalingrad. On Wednesday, calls to his two phones did not connect. Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said Mariupol was “besieged by Russian occupiers” and was in dire need of help.
Russia continues to hold hostage more than 400,000 people in Mariupol, blocking humanitarian aid and evacuation. The indiscriminate shelling continues. Almost 3,000 newborns do not have medicines and food. I call on the world to act! Force Russia to stop its barbaric war against civilians and babies!
— Dmitry Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 9, 2022
“Mariupol is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe. No humanitarian convoy will be able to reach a city left without water, heating and electricity,” he tweeted.
The humanitarian corridor functioned in the northeastern city of Sumy, from where civilians were able to leave for the second day in a row. They were able to leave in their own cars. On Tuesday, several hundred foreign students trapped in the fighting left on buses for Poltava, west of Kharkov.
For those who remained in Sumy, conditions were grim. Its mayor Alexander Lysenko said Russia had carried out four indiscriminate bombing raids since Monday, killing civilians and children.
The latest attack took place in the dark on Wednesday morning and targeted a residential area in the city centre. “We managed to dig up six people, still alive, and a dog,” Lysenko said.
Two convoys managed to get away on Tuesday and were allowed to pass through the enemy cordon. But the Russians used the second column as human shields to advance their tanks, he said.
“They are shooting at civilian vehicles. Some cars pass, others don’t,” he said. “It’s a matter of luck.”
He added: “They are shooting at civilians trying to escape. Russians have no humanity.”