Azov Captain in Mariupol Says No Communication with Superiors for Two Weeks

National Guard Capt. Svyatoslav Palamar says he has had no communication with his superiors for two weeks, Censort.net reports citing the Azov Regiment’s Mariupol Telegram Channel.

On April 10, Palamar’s video address was in reference to a text message he received asking him “how are things, friend?” in the besieged southeastern port city of Mariupol.

In response, the national guard captain said it’s when politicians who say that “we support them, we are constantly in touch…but for more than two weeks no one raises the handset and nobody communicates with anyone,” he says.

He added that the situation is akin “to when our women prepare soup [for us] but it doesn’t enter your mouth because a few city blocks away a child is dying from hunger, and you cannot help them.”

Invading Russian forces control most of the devastated city as part of Kremlin despot Vladimir Putin’s attempt to subjugate Ukraine in a renewed invasion that started on Feb. 24.

Should Russian forces succeed in seizing Mariupol, the Donetsk region’s second-largest city, it will have secured a land bridge between mainland Russia to Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed in 2014. That land link along the Azov Sea coast is already established but the city’s takeover has become symbolic for both Russia and Ukraine.

Ukraine’s military intelligence has said that about 10,000 Russian military personnel are besieging the city and that Ukrainian Marine and National Guard units still control certain enclaves of the city, mostly in the center.