Hundreds and potentially thousands of civilians in the embattled southern city Mariupol have been two or more days without food, and Russian Federation (RF) forces are intentionally blocking humanitarian convoys with supplies from delivering relief, a statement from the Mariupol City Council said on Friday, March 25.
The number of civilians in Mariupol, a city bombarded intensely by the RF for more than two weeks, is unknown. The Telegram-delivered city council message said “hundreds of thousands” of civilians could still remain in the city. President Zelensky in a Tuesday speech said the national government believes the number to be around 100,000 people. The peacetime population of Mariupol was more than 400,000.
Over the week RF units allowed less than 10,000 refugees using buses and private vehicles to escape Mariupol westward.
According to Ukrainian officials, RF authorities also have forcibly transported as many as 40,000 residents to filtration and detention camps in the RF-occupied city Novoazovsk, as well as to holding sites in Rostov Oblast’.
The city council statement said civilians still in the city are beginning to die of starvation and that some are too week even to walk to collection points, so that they might be evacuated.
The statement called for international intervention against the RF army, and use of military force if necessary, to compel RF troops blockading Mariupol to let food in and people out.
“We are at an end. We need ten times tougher sanctions, closed skies, planes, tanks from Ukraine’s allies, diplomatic superpowers. Anything! To save hundreds of thousands of people in Mariupol. To save us from hell and an endless circle of torture. To save everyone else! To save (other) cities of our country from the terrible fate of Mariupol. We beg for help!,” the statement said in part.
A Friday statement from the National Guard Azov Regiment, a key formation in the ongoing UAF defense of Mariupol, also called on the international community, and European nations in particular, to take action against the Kremlin’s combat forces which, according to Azov, were committing the clear war crimes of forced migration and direct attacks against civilians.
“These barbarians (RF forces) capture ordinary people and under duress take them to Russia, where they confiscate documents and send them to work in the northern and eastern regions of the aggressor country. Doesn’t this resemble the concentration camps of Hitler’s Germany or the gulags of the Stalinist regime?,” the Azov statement said in part.
Independent media has estimated Ukrainian defenses in Mariupol, including elements of Azov, 36 Marine Brigade, police and UAF detachments, number between 5,000 and 7,000 men. The besieging RF force, according those estimates, is roughly of the same strength. The opposing forces, although fighting daily, are at a tactical stalemate, with the UAF unable to break the RF siege, and RF forces unable to overcome UAF positions inside the city.
