Drawing by Nikita Titov
Being unable to occupy the city that fiercely fights back, Russian forces put it under siege on the 1st of March. Mass artillery shelling and bombing raids had begun.
Despite the absence of water, electricity, gas, heating, medicine and mobile communication since the 3rd of March, occupants don`t allow civilians to go out of there, and don`t let humanitarian aid to go into the city. All the exits are mined. For a month of total blockade in a once blooming city 90 percents of residential buildings (more than 2,3 thousand) have been damaged, almost half of them absolutely destroyed. The enemy also razed 90 percents of private houses (more than 61,2 thousand), 90 percents of schools and higher education institutions, almost all of the hospitals, ambulatories, maternity homes, and kindergartens. Most people live in cold basements because of March being very cold, while the temperature dropped to -12 degrees Celcius and it was snowing.
The most horrible fact is that tens of thousands of civilians – ethnic Ukrainians, Russians, and Greeks, tens of thousands of whom lived there before the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation are now dying from shellings, diseases and famine on a whim of a crazy pseudo-fuhrer from the Kremlin.
According to information from the major of Mariupol Vadym Boichenko, as of March 28, about 5 thousand citizens are known to have died, 200 of them are children. However, the assistant of the major Petro Andriushchenko reported, that the number of victims could reach 20 thousand. Accurate number of dead is unknown since there are no people and technical equipment to clear the rubble and burry the unfortunate, who are still there. Today the ruined Mariupol, where 170 thousand people still live is going through horrors, which are more terrifying than apocalyptic prophecies.
The city is shaking from the strikes of an enemy, whose actions are beyond atrocity. There is no justification and excuse to those, who dropped bombs on the ambulatory №3 and maternity home on the 9th of March. As a result of a shelling, three people died, including a little girl. 17 women, doctors, and children were injured. Taken out of the burning house, mothers with little children found a shelter in the theater, where almost a thousand of people, who lost their homes, were hiding. On the 16th of March a russian pilot dropped a 1000-kilogram bomb on this theater, where were two big signs «CHILDREN» (satellite photos from American company Maxar Technologies also showed that). After that, the central part of the theater was destroyed and the entrance to the bomb shelter inside the building was overwhelmed with debris. That day russians bombed the building of a swimming pool, where also were women, children and elderly people. According to city`s government information, at least 300 people died just under the ruins of the theater.
Those, who could get out from the besieged city, tell horrible stories from their lives. In the social media one of the volunteers who streamed from Mariupol, told about a building near the volunteer center that got shelled. Many people died. “A body of a child, a boy, lied just on the road. I checked his pulse and saw that he was dead. My colleague decided to move the body out of the road. An old man with absolutely grey hair ran up to him and said: «What are you doing, where are you taking him?» As they found out, it was the boy`s grandfather. He asked: «What should I do with him now?» I said: «Burry him». His reply: «How? I don’t even have a shovel». In the backyards of many houses there are cemeteries now. Families or neighbors burry their relatives or friends right under windows of apartments where the dead used to live before the war. On their graves there are crosses made out of plywood and handwritten sings with names, dates of death, and phone numbers. City cemeteries are mined or under shelling. Kateryna Yerska says, that there are a lot of bodies on the streets and morgues are overfilled. Thus mass graves appeared.
The UN reported that they received information from a satellite that confirms existence of the mass graves in Mariupol. «According to our calculations, there are almost 200 people buried in one grave», – CNN quotes these words of the head of the Monitoring mission of UN in Ukraine Matilda Bogner. Mariupol government urges the world to recognize the actions of Russian Federation in Mariupol as genocide of Ukrainian people. «We recognize and urge the world to recognize the actions of Russian army as war crimes and the president of Russia Vladimr Putin as a war criminal», – a quote from city council’s message in Telegram.
Deputies of Mariupol City Council held a session for the first time since the beginning of the war. They gathered online and called on to the world to join forces to unblock international humanitarian aid to Mariupol and to organize total evacuation from the city. In their report, the city council vehemently denied any possibility of collaboration with russian federation.
«Mariupol was, is and will always be a Ukrainian city», reads the statement.
