“Mariupol has been destroyed, there are tens of thousands of dead, but despite this the Russians are not stopping their offensive,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address to South Korean lawmakers.
Reuters confirmed the widespread destruction of Mariupol but could not verify the accuracy of its estimate of those killed in the strategic city, which lies between the Russian-annexed Crime and the eastern areas of Ukraine held by the Russian-backed separatists.
If confirmed, this would be by far the highest death toll reported so far in a single location in Ukraine, where towns and villages have been under constant shelling and where many bodies, including civilians, were seen in the streets.
The leader of the self-proclaimed Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, told Russian news agency RIA on Monday that more than 5,000 people may have been killed in Mariupol. He said Ukrainian forces were responsible.
Petro Andryushchenko, an assistant to the mayor of Mariupol, said on the Telegram messaging service that the number of people leaving the city had decreased, not because people did not want to escape but because Russian forces had slowed down the checks before departure.
About 10,000 people were waiting to be checked by Russian forces, he said. Russia does not allow military personnel to leave with civilian vacus. There was no immediate comment from Moscow, which has previously blamed Ukraine for blocking the evacuations.
Mariupol was among nine humanitarian corridors agreed with Russia on Monday to evacuate people from besieged eastern regions, but its corridor was reserved for private cars, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Telegram.
It was not possible to agree on the provision of buses, she added.
Ukraine says Russian forces are massing for a new offensive on eastern regions, including Mariupol, where residents have been without water, food and energy for weeks. Moscow describes its invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation”.