Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, is located in the Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine and has been under direct Russian control since May 2022.
Russian attacks on Mariupol began on 24 February 2022 – the first day of the invasion. The city has suffered some consequences of the war worst crime.
In March, one air raid tear down a maternity and children’s hospital in the city. Russian officials have declared the hospital a legitimate military target, based on their unproven assertion that Ukrainian military targets are in place and that all patients and medical personnel have left. Go.
However, footage circulating on social media shows expectant mothers being escorted out of a dilapidated building amid charred cars and rubble.
Among the injured was a pregnant woman who was photographed while being carried on a stretcher. Neither she nor her baby could be saved, a surgeon who treated her later confirmed. The photo shocked the world.
Also in March, Russia bomb a theater where hundreds of people took refuge in Mariupol. The word “children” was spelled out on both sides of the theater before it was bombed.
Afterward 450,000 people Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said that of those who lived in the city before the war, a third left by mid-April.
Some people stayed in shelter in the Azovstal steel mills. For Ukrainians, Azovstal has become a symbol of resistancesheltered about 2,600 soldiers and civilians while the base was like a fortress blizzard by Russian bombardment for weeks.
For Moscow, the vast site was a disappointment, the last recalcitrant stronghold in a city its forces had taken control of weeks earlier.
“Block off the industrial area, so that even a fly can’t escape,” Putin said, his orders broadcast on state television.
Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest Holding, which owns the factory, told CNN why Putin wants to take over Azovstal so much.
“I don’t think that’s the type of tree he wants. I think it’s about the symbol they want to conquer Mariupol. They never expected Mariupol to resist,” said Ryzhenkov.
Azovstal finally fell at the end of May, after a evacuation operation rescued hundreds of Ukrainians from the factory.
