The head of the Red Cross delegation in Ukraine, Pascal Hundt, said on Sunday that his staff were unable to enter the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol for the last week, as a result of the intense Russian bombardments.
“Our team tried for five days to enter Mariupol,” Hundt told British broadcaster Sky News. “The security guarantees we had were not good, so about 20 kilometers away from Mariupol we had to turn around,” he said of one such attempt.
“It's a difficult journey, because you have to cross the front line, you have to go through a lot of controls. Sometimes, the people at those controls, the soldiers, are not informed of your trip,” he said.
That is “just one example of how complicated it is to turn agreements between capitals into action” to facilitate humanitarian aid, Hundt said.
The head of the mission to Ukraine of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) assured that people in southern Mariupol continue to lack food, water or heating systems. “It really is hell,” he said.
Hundt also warned that the attack that killed at least 50 people on Friday at Kramatorsk station in the east of the country has caused many Ukrainians to desist from trying to evacuate their cities by train and are opting for private vehicles.
“Today we were in Chernigov, in the north of the country, and we see basically the same picture everywhere, it's really discouraging,” he said.
“We talked to the locals, we found people totally desperate, without food, without electricity, without water, without heating, they have to go outside to light a fire and cook, they are living in horrible conditions,” he described.
Last week the Turkish Government insisted on the urgency of declaring a ceasefire as soon as possible in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which has been besieged for weeks by Russian troops, to evacuate civilians, an operation that could also be carried out by sea with ships that Turkey has offered.
Hulusi Akar, Turkey's defense minister, spoke last week with his Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksii Reznikov, about the “urgency of safe evacuation by land and sea,” the Turkish ministry said in a statement.
A few days ago Turkey offered to send ships to assist in the departure of the civilian population from Mariupol, which was badly hit by Russian bombings.
The use of Turkish ships has been proposed to both Russia and Ukraine.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu declared a week ago that there are a total of 87 Turkish citizens in Ukraine, approximately 30 in Mariupol, stating that the situation in Mariupol was making evacuation very difficult.
The Russian authorities assured last Saturday that they were ready to ensure the entry of ships involved in the evacuation into the port of Berdyansk, near Mariupol, and the departure from it in accordance with the norms of international maritime law.
For their part, the Ukrainian authorities have launched the final Russian offensive against the Donbas in the east of the country. According to Ukrainian sources, Russian troops attempt to break enemy lines with an enveloping maneuver from the Kharkov region to the north, the port city of Mariupol to the south and the Lugansk region east of the Donbas.
“They have started to squeeze us very tightly from the south and also from the north. The plan to encircle our forces is being carried out everywhere,” Oleksii Arestovich, Ukrainian presidential adviser, commented today.
Almost two weeks ago, the Russian Army announced the withdrawal of the Kiev region in the north of the country and also from the Chernobyl nuclear exclusion zone. However, Kiev maintains that Moscow lacks enough men to conquer the Donbas.
The “liberation” of Donbas will involve the use of aviation, artillery and missiles, as happened on Friday at the train station in Kramatorsk, a Ukrainian military stronghold in the area, where fifty people died.
With information from EFE
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