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‘Nothing’: Life-long residents mourn loss in Mariupol
STORY: The besieged city of Mariupol in Ukraine is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe.After weeks of heavy bombardment from Russian forces, Mariupol’s mayor Vadym Boichenko on Monday said all civilians must be evacuated from the city, to allow them to escape the crisis.However, many are trapped there without heat or power, and scrounging for food from the debris. Ukraine on Monday said it was impossible to create any safe corridors, citing intelligence reports about possible Russian “provocations” along the routes.The mayor’s office said that while almost 300,000 people have already fled, about 160,000 still remain. Reuters could not independently verify the figure. Against the sound the of shelling in the distance, one resident named Genadiy was salvaging what was left of his life.”37 years, I proudly worked as shoemaker, and I was left with nothing. No workshop, no work, nothing.”Another resident, a design engineer named Irina, spent her whole life in Mariupol, working in one of Ukraine’s largest steel mills. She described her life as beautiful, before Russia invaded her country more than a month ago. Now she and her family have been forced to take shelter in the remains of their apartment. “Now we have nothing, just nothing. We are left homeless. They have broken everything. We have nowhere to go.”And food has also been hard to come by. “Yesterday, accidentally, really accidentally, my husband grabbed this from somewhere, it was not even humanitarian aid. Somebody just opened some warehouse with frozen fish. He grabbed eight fish. We will cook the soup for four days from them. Four days for eight people. Because there is no food at all.”Russia denies targeting civilians and blames Ukraine for the failure to agree on safe corridors for those trapped. Moscow calls its invasion a special operation to demilitarize and ‘denazify’ Ukraine.A spokesperson for Mariupol’s mayor said that nearly 5,000 people in the city, including more than 200 children, have already been killed.
