Thousands of Ukrainians flee Mariupol as Russian advance

Russian forces have entered the besieged port city of Mariúpol which has been bombed and where heavy fighting on Saturday paralyzed a major steel plant and local authorities have requested more Western assistance.

Mariúpol It has been the scene of some of the worst suffering in the war and its fall could mean a breakthrough for the Russians on the battlefield at a time when most of their forces have been stranded on the outskirts of major cities for more than three weeks in what is the largest-scale ground invasion of Europe since World War II.

”Children and older adults are dying. The city is destroyed and is being wiped off the face of the Earth.”said the police officer Mariúpol, Michail Vershnin, in a video taken on a rubble-strewn street and addressed to Western governments. The Associated Press has authenticated the video.

The town hall of the city of Mariúpol he claimed that Russian soldiers have forced thousands of the city’s residents to be relocated to Russia.

“The occupiers are forcing people to leave Ukraine for Russian territory,” the city council stressed in a statement. “The occupiers illegally removed people from the Levoberezhny district and from a shelter in a sports club building, where more than 1,000 people (mostly women and children) had taken refuge from the constant shelling.”