Russian forces have taken control of large parts of Mariupol after weeks of siege and bombardment, the city’s mayor said on Monday.
“Not everything is in our power,” Mayor Vadym Boichenko told CNN on Monday. “Unfortunately, today we are in the hands of the occupiers.”
Boichenko said less than half of the city’s peacetime residents stayed.
“According to our estimates, today there are about 160,000 people in the besieged city of Mariupol, where it is impossible to live because there is no water, no electricity, no heating, no connection,” he said. “And it’s really scary.”
The apparent loss of Mariupol comes after nearly a month of heavy bombing and days of bitter street fighting.
The southern port city on the Azov Sea coast has been the target of Russian ambitions since the invasion began last month, part of an effort to link Russian forces in Crimea with forces in the separatist Donbass region to create a single front in southern Ukraine.
In the process, the Kremlin cut off the city’s electricity, water and food while shelling it from land and sea.
Alina Beskrovna, a Mariupol resident who fled the city in a motor convoy and made her way to Poland, said that in the city people melted snow for water and cooked on open fires despite the threat of bombing, “because if you don’t do it , you will have nothing to eat.”
“Unfortunately, today we are in the hands of the occupiers,” Mayor of Mariupol Vadym Boichenko told REUTERS
At the entrance of the Slowaskiego Theater there is a banner reading “Children” in Russian and #savemariupol. Getty Images
A girl walks in the courtyard of an apartment building destroyed in the wake of the Ukraine-Russia conflict in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, March 28, 2022. REUTERS
“I think a lot of people are starving in their homes without help right now,” she said. “This is mass murder committed by the Russians.”
The international community sharply condemned the Russian actions in Mariupol.
A maternity ward was destroyed in a Russian airstrike on Mariupol earlier this month.
Local residents transported belongings from his house destroyed.REUTERS
Almost 160,000 people are in the besieged city of Mariupol today.REUTERS
About 300 people were killed a week later when Russian troops bombed a theater used as civilian accommodation. The theater was marked with large letters that read “Children” in Russian.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinkin cited both attacks when he accused Russian forces of war crimes last week.
The apparent fall of Mariupol comes after a string of victories by Ukrainian forces, which claim to have recaptured suburbs around the capital, Kyiv, as well as Trostyanets, a town south of Sumy in the northeast of the country.
Ukrainian forces also broke Russian hold on Kherson north of the Crimean peninsula last week, although it’s unclear whether Ukrainian forces have taken full control of the city.
With mail wires