Russia’s assault on Ukraine has entered its fourth week, and Russian forces have now sent ground troops into the major southeastern city of Mariupol – which has been under heavy bombardment since the start of the conflict – and is now poised to fall to the military advance. Fighting has reportedly reached the center of the city of some half-million people.
“The fighting is already in the city itself,” a city official in the mayor’s office told The Wall Street Journal on Saturday. “But Mariupol remains a Ukrainian city.”
Multiple international reports have confirmed the city has been totally cut off, and has long been under siege by Russian forces, with WSJ detailing that the capital of Kiev has “tried to send military reinforcements to Mariupol, but so far this has proved impossible.”
“Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, said there was no way for Ukrainian forces to break Russia’s siege, addressing criticism the government is not doing enough,” the report said.
War correspondents have cited scenes of people cooking in the streets, after electricity, gas and water have been cut off for many days running at this point, also amid freezing temperatures. Most of the civilians still there are huddled in bomb shelters, and some have risked their lives trying to make it out of the city, despite multiple short-lived attempts at establishing ‘humanitarian corridors’ to allow civilians to safely flee.
There is also the grim reality of in some instances bodies lying in the streets, with many sectors being too unsafe for anyone to go and retrieve them, also amid reports of mass graves.
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