Status: 08.03.2022 8:09 p.m
Mariupol has been under fire for days. According to information from Moscow, pro-Russian units are advancing on the Ukrainian port city – they are apparently not in the city yet. The situation for the people there is catastrophic.
According to information from Moscow, pro-Russian units are still advancing in the embattled Ukrainian port of Mariupol. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, fighters from the self-proclaimed “People’s Republic” of Donetsk have advanced almost a kilometer since the end of a ceasefire.
conflicting parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body.
Apparently no Russian soldiers in the city yet
Mariupol on the Azov Sea has been under siege for days. According to the US Department of Defense, the city was surrounded by Russian troops, but they were not in the city.
According to Ukrainian sources, the ceasefire promised by Russia had previously been broken. “Ceasefire violated! Russian forces are now shelling the humanitarian corridor from Zaporizhia to Mariupol,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko wrote on Twitter at noon. Since last Saturday, several attempts to bring people from the city of 440,000 to safety have failed. Kyiv and Moscow blame each other for failed evacuation attempts.
According to humanitarian aid workers, the situation for the people in the port city is catastrophic. “The situation is apocalyptic,” said spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, Ewan Watson. In Mariupol, all supplies ran out. The ICRC has delivered all stocks and is trying to bring supplies into the country in all possible ways.
Separatists name their own casualties
According to their own statements, separatists and Russian units achieved successes on various front sections in eastern Ukraine. The head of the Luhansk People’s Republic, which Russia recognizes as independent, Leonid Pasechnik, said the town of Popasna had been captured and Ukrainian forces had been encircled. For the first time, the separatists admitted their own losses. Since the start of the “special operation,” as Russia calls the war in Ukraine, 47 fighters from the “Donetsk People’s Republic” have been killed and 179 injured, the spokesman for the pro-Russian forces in the Donetsk region, Eduard Bassurin, said according to local media. The Russian Ministry of Defense did not provide any new information on its own losses. Most recently, the number of almost 500 soldiers killed was mentioned.
Meanwhile, Ukraine said three people were killed in a mine explosion on a road in the Chernihiv region. Three children were injured, said the human rights commissioner of the Ukrainian parliament, Lyudmyla Denisova. The three adults died at the scene, while the children were taken to hospitals with varying degrees of injuries. The mine detonated when the victims drove a car over the explosive device.
Anti-personnel mine deployed?
It is probably the first time since the Russian invasion began almost two weeks ago that civilians have been killed by an anti-personnel mine, Denisova told the AFP news agency. The mines, hidden under straw and rubbish, were placed on the road by the Russian army. The use of such weapons against the civilian population is prohibited under international law and constitutes “a crime against humanity,” Denisova said.
The mayor of the embattled Ukrainian metropolis of Kharkov meanwhile accused the attacking Russian troops of intentionally shelling civilian infrastructure. “Kindergartens, schools, maternity wards and clinics are being shot at,” Mayor Ihor Terekhov told CNN, according to a translation. “If hundreds of civilian buildings are involved, it’s not an accident. This is a targeted attack.”