Information is scarce from Mariupol. But they all tell of the despair of the inhabitants trapped in the city besieged by the Russian army. “It’s really almost desperate,” admits Stephen Cornish, the head of MSF Switzerland and one of the coordinators of the NGO’s action in Ukraine.
Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov and a strategically important city for the Russian advance, has been under constant artillery shelling for 10 days, according to Petro Andryushchenko, a city councilor. According to estimates by the regional administration, more than 1,200 people have been killed since the beginning of the siege, but this figure does not take into account the bodies which could be under the debris of the destroyed buildings. Attempts to establish humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to leave have repeatedly failed, with both sides blaming each other for failure.
“There are bodies in the streets, no one is burying them”
The inhabitants who were able to leave are now trying by all means to have news of those who have remained in this city where communications have been almost completely cut off for more than a week. A few rare places in the city still allow to obtain sometimes a weak telephone signal.
Yulia, a 29-year-old teacher who fled the city on March 3, said her mother-in-law, who remained there, managed to call her from a tower far from her home. “She told us that she was fine, but that the attacks are incessant. There are bodies in the streets, no one is burying them. They can stay there for several days, until a truck from the municipality comes to collect them and deposits them in a huge mass grave”.
The city is without water, without gas, without electricity, without communications, and in recent days people have been seen fighting for food. “Hundreds of thousands of people (…) are literally besieged,” laments Stephen Cornish. But “sieges are a medieval practice” prohibited by the modern laws of war. “We are really heading towards an unimaginable tragedy,” he warns.
“The shells are falling everywhere, all the time”
Outside Mariupol, families are hoping for news. Many of them post, for example, on the Telegram messaging application photos and information about their loved ones who have remained there, hoping that someone can have news.
Iana Karban, 30, explains that she has just received a desperate message from her parents: “It’s a total disaster in the building. We have just been bombed, and eight apartments are on fire”. “They want to leave the city, but it’s not possible. Shells are falling everywhere, all the time. It’s not even possible to go out on the street,” she explains. Since then, no one has managed to contact anyone in their neighborhood, and Iana does not know what has become of her parents and their neighbors.