Vladimir Putin's 'Special Military Operation'

"With no information coming out of a city, no pictures of demolished buildings and dying children, the Russian forces could do whatever they wanted."

"The only radio you could catch broadcast twisted Russian lies -- that Ukrainians were holding Mariupol hostage, shooting at buildings, developing chemical weapons."

Oleksiy Arestovych, Ukrainian presidential adviser

 

"One bomb at a time, the Russians cut electricity, water, food supplies and finally, crucially, the cellphone, radio and television towers."

"When we [Chernov and photographer Evgeniy Maloletka] arrived, emergency workers were still pulling bloodied pregnant women from the ruins [of the Mariupol maternity hospital, bombed by Russian planes]."

"We had recorded so many dead people and dead children, an endless line. I didn't understand why he [Vladimir Putin] thought still more deaths could change anything. I was wrong."

"The propaganda was so strong that some people we talked to believed it despite the evidence of their own eyes."

"The message was constantly repeated, in Soviet style; Mariupol is surrounded. Surrender your weapons."

Mstyslav Chernov, video journalist, The Associated Press 

 

"Everything is destroyed. Where can we go?

"We're cooking over a fire -- for now we still have a bit of food and some firewood."

Irina Chernenko, Mariupol university librarian

Shelling by Russian forces has prevented civilians from being able to evacuate the besieged port city  Reuters

 

What else could it be termed as but a war crime, the constant aerial bombardment of a besieged city where hundreds of thousands of citizens are trapped with no escape routes, amidst a shortage of food and medicine, no heating, no electricity, where there is no outside communication and where the bombing of civilian infrastructure is raising the number of dead city dwellers day by day. The southeastern city of Mariupol, a prize that continues to elude the Russian military is beyond dire straits.

The devastated city was host to a journalist/photographer duo working for The Associated Press to obtain an inside story of what is transpiring within the beleaguered city and how its residents are coping with a no-holds-barred military campaign launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his legacy scheme to bring Ukraine back into the fold of the Russian Federation on its way to assuming the stranglehold re-conquest of its neighbours in eastern Europe.

The two have since emerged from the city, prepared to report on the infrastructure carnage they witnessed and the sight of hundreds of dead civilians, too numerous to honour with private funerals, instead being placed in mass burial pits, where the danger on site of being struck by missiles is such that families cannot attend even those basic funera-rite burials. 

Mariupol's position as a key port on the Sea of Azov is an integral part of Russian President Putin's plan to absorb Eastern Ukraine, its possession providing a direct route from Russia through the Donbas and the Crimean peninsula, to the Odesa port facilities on the Black Sea. In Mariupol, the strategic gateway Putin yearns to possess air, land and sea bombing raids flattened areas of the city driving hundreds of thousands of its residents into whatever shelters they could find.

 

Some of those shelters in buildings, housing theatres, shopping malls, hospitals, have become death traps for the civilians seeking haven and protection from the bombs. Buildings bombed by Russian planes collapsing into rubble covering the very 'shelters' being used to provide safety to women, children, the elderly, suffocating and crushing them under the weight of the destroyed building above, leaving desperate rescuers to find any still alive, while the shelling continues.

 

Civilians trapped in Mariupol are seen on the road on Sunday. (Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

 

Russia gave Mariupol a deadline of 5 a.m. on Monday past to surrender the city to the military surrounding and bashing it. "There can be no question of any surrender", responded Ukraine's deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk. "What's happening now in Mariupol is a massive war crime, destroying everything, bombarding and killing everybody". The bombing represented a "massive war crime", stated Josep Borrell, foreign policy representative for the European Union.

"To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will e remembered for centuries to come." The attackers loosing endless munitions on Mariupol would be held "responsible for war crimes", vowed Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Buildings charred, windows blown out, bodies lying along the road wrapped in blankets in that part of the city held by Russian troops. Nearby, groups of men dig graves beside the road.

 

Mariupol officials speak of 2,300 citizens of the city whose lives have thus far been destroyed. Thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the conflict. The figures for the Russian military alone stand at 10,000 dead, including four generals and an admiral. The loss of Russian war machines, destroyed tanks, artillery, armour and planes alone is monumental; the death toll and the destroyed war machines in such a short time unheard of in modern warfare.  

Ukrainian resistance has taken Russia by surprise. It is celebrated world-wide. No active outside help is available for Ukraine. Moral support and weaponry aplenty; otherwise, it is on its own against one of the most formidably equipped militaries in the world. The Ukraine military using Soviet-era armaments, Russia in possession of the most technically advanced weapons conceivable. 

 

And the Ukrainian military is holding its own, an inspiration to underdogs everywhere. "I think Moscow is searching for something it can use to declare a victory. Taking the Donbas and having leverage to attain concessions from Kyiv is probably what they're looking to accomplish at this point", asserted Michael Kofman, specialist on the Russian military at Washington think tank, CNA.