Mariupol has been crushed by Russia’s war.
Its streets have been pounded by shells and airstrikes, its people left without water or heat in the freezing winter and its leaders forced to plead for aid that can’t make it through.
The deadly Russian strike on a children’s and maternity hospital in the besieged city Wednesday brought the world’s attention and outrage. But with efforts to create a humanitarian corridor failing day after day, there has been little sign of an end to Mariupol’s suffering.
Encircled and bombarded, the port city in Ukraine’s south has been without electricity, heat, water, food or medical supplies for days. With bodies piling up in the streets, officials have turned to burying the dead in mass graves.
“It’s a complete catastrophe,” said Oleksandr Sosnovskyi of the place he has called home his entire life but has now been forced to leave behind.
“The shells hit anywhere and everywhere. There is no safe place in the city,” Sosnovskyi, 39, said by phone Monday from Zaporizhzhya, 120 miles northwest of Mariupol.
Aid groups, local officials and residents — most of whom have made it out of the city — also paint a dire picture of the conditions endured by those still trapped and tormented by Russian shelling.
Temperatures at night are below freezing, bringing bitter cold but also the relief of snow that civilians have resorted to collecting for scarce drinking water. People are fetching firewood to stay warm. Stores have been looted for what little provisions remain.
