In Mariupol, the major port city of Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine, the day of Saturday March 5 began with the announcement of an agreement for a humanitarian corridor. A note of hope, which quickly dissipated.
“We found three buses with drivers willing to risk their lives to transport civilians. Four assembly points for individual cars filled with civilians. But at about 11 o’clock, [les Russes] began to bombard the assembly points”, reports Anna Romanenko, journalist and pro-Ukraine activist. Usually installed with its editorial office in the city center, it is currently in an area which allows it to be in regular contact with several interlocutors prisoners of the siege organized by the Russian military forces. For four days, no civilian has been able to leave the besieged city.
Electricity, Internet and mobile network cut
For Anna Romanenko, with whom The world spoke via e-mail, the bombing of the humanitarian corridor serves to dissuade the inhabitants of Mariupol from leaving, but also to hide the terrible reality of the siege, by making it seem that the situation is normal, since people do not wish to evacuate. The Russian army has also made sure that the Mariupolitains are deprived of electricity, the Internet and the mobile network, adding a kind of “digital headquarters” to the military headquarters of the city.
Anna Romanenko assures that the number of people to be evacuated is not in the thousands, but in the tens of thousands: “Today, despite agreements and commitments, Russia has not only prevented civilians from leaving the siege, it has also undertaken to shell the columns of civilians to deter them. » The evacuation was immediately suspended and the inhabitants had to resolve to return to their shelters.
Mariupol has been under bombardment since February 24. They were sporadic the first three days and the local authorities managed in the meantime to repair gas leaks, power lines and water pipes. For four days, the bombardments are permanent, it is a carpet of bombs which falls on all the city. There is not a single street left to take shelter. Municipal services can no longer make emergency repairs. It is not simply mortar fire, but multiple rockets and cruise missiles, equipped with cluster bombs.
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