Mariupol has been besieged and shelled by Russian troops for days. 50 to 100 bombs fall a day. The EU now sees the siege as a violation of international humanitarian law.
According to local information, around 80 percent of the apartments in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, which was badly hit by the war, have been destroyed and around 30 percent of them cannot be rebuilt.
“An average of 50 to 100 bombs are dropped on the city every day. The devastation is enormous,” the city council said on Telegram on Thursday.
EU accuses Russia of violating international humanitarian law
The EU assessed the siege and bombing of Mariupol by Russian troops as a “serious and grave violation of international humanitarian law”. “This siege is inhumane,” said a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in Brussels. The siege must be lifted and the bombing and attacks on civilians stopped.
International humanitarian law provides, for example, that in armed conflicts a distinction must always be made between the civilian population and the combatants. Accordingly, neither the civilian population as a whole nor individual civilians may be attacked. Attacks may only be aimed at military targets.
Mayor describes catastrophic conditions
The deputy mayor of Mariupol describes catastrophic conditions. The lack of water supply is particularly dramatic, Serhiy Orlov told the magazine “Forbes Ukraine”. “A small part of the people can privately take water from wells.” Since the heaters were no longer working anyway, some people used the water from the heating pipes to drink. «Some also say that they take it out of puddles. When there was snow, they melted it.”
Sergiy Orlov accused Russia of targeting civilians to force the city to capitulate. Russia always insists that it only attacks military targets.
According to the city council, Mariupol has been blocked for 16 days, and thousands have had to take cover in shelters from Russian fire. So far, around 30,000 civilians have fled the city. The information was not independently verified. According to information from Kyiv, aid convoys have not been able to get through for days. Several attempts to evacuate the strategically important city failed.
According to Ukrainian information, thousands of people have been able to leave the city in around 6,500 private cars in the past two days.
Russia: 43,000 people fled Mariupol
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, another 43,000 people from Mariupol have been brought to safety. In addition, 134 tons of relief supplies, including medicines and food, were handed over to the people on Thursday, Major General Mikhail Mizintsev said in Moscow.
Mizintsev accused “Ukrainian nationalists” of blocking the escape corridors and not letting peaceful people through. The goal of the Ukrainian side is to buy time to receive help from the West. This information cannot be verified.
According to military spokesman Mizintsev, Moscow on Thursday agreed to a proposal by Kiev to set up nine more humanitarian corridors in embattled cities and to observe the ceasefire. There are such corridors in the capital Kyiv, in the second largest city Kharkiv in the east of the country, including a route to Russia; in Sumy, Zhytomyr and Zaporizhia. Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of sabotaging the escape corridors.
Shelling of a theater causes horror
The report on Wednesday evening about the shelling of a theater in Mariupol, in which hundreds of civilians are said to have sought refuge, caused particular horror. Ukraine and Russia blame each other for the attack. According to a member of parliament on Thursday, the building’s air-raid shelter remained intact.
«After a terrible night of uncertainty, on the morning of the 22nd day of the war, finally good news from Mariupol! The air raid shelter held out,” Serhiy Taruta wrote on Facebook. The debris had started to be removed. Officials said more than 1,000 people were sheltering in the theater at the time of the attack.
Before the attack on the theater, there were apparently warnings that children should stay in it.
Source: Stern
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