Pavlo Kyrylenko, the Ukrainian Governor of Donetsk Oblast, told CNN on Friday that Mariupol is still being defended by Ukrainian soldiers despite the city being razed to the ground.
The southern Ukrainian city, which sits on the Sea of Azov, is a key port city of Ukraine and an important tactical location for Russian soldiers to take control of. The city sits between the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, and the contested Donbas region in the east.
“The enemy cannot seize Mariupol. The enemy may seize the land that Mariupol used to stand on, but the city of Mariupol is no more,” Kyrylenko insisted, adding that the city has been completely destroyed by Russian forces.
“The city of Mariupol has been wiped off the face of the earth by the Russian Federation, by those who will never be able to restore it,” he said.
Kyrylenko also called Russia’s plans to build a land bridge between Crimea and the Donetsk region an “illusion,” stressing that Ukrainian soldiers will be able to hold off Russian troops.
According to Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, Russia is “constantly calling on additional units to storm the city” and the campaign against Mariupol remains relentless.
Thousands of civilians have died in the city, and out of a population of 400,000 before the invasion, the city is now home to tens of thousands of people trapped and unable to escape via previously-agreed humanitarian corridors.
Ukraine Pushing to Break Russian Seige of Mariupol
Ukraine said on Friday that its troops were trying to break Russia’s siege of the major port city, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisting that the situation in both the east and the south of the country remains “very difficult.”
“The successes of our military on the battlefield are really significant, historically significant. But they are still not enough to clean our land of the occupiers. We will beat them some more,” Zelenskyy said in a video address on Friday.
While the fighting continues, however, Russia continues to deny reports of residential buildings and hospitals being targeted by invading troops.
Russia Denies Hospital Airstrikes In Mariupol
The brutality of Russian forces in Mariupol is well-documented, with residential buildings destroyed while civilians slept and horror stories describing how hospitals, medical facilities, and maternity wards were targeted by invading troops.
During an interview with CNN, one doctor in Mariupol described how she left a hospital in the city right before a maternity ward was hit and destroyed by a Russian airstrike. Dr. Lyudmila Mykhailenko, the acting director of Hospital No. 3, described how the clinic was destroyed “with just one blow.”
Mariupol’s maternity hospital was destroyed by Russian troops on March 9. The Russian embassy in the United Kingdom, however, shared photographs of victims in stretchers being treated and carried away from the scene as “fake.”
Photographs taken by Associated Press photographers and journalists were shared by the embassy and emblazoned with a large “FAKE” caption over the top. The embassy claimed that the individuals were wearing “realistic makeup” and pretending to be wounded to generate anti-Russian hatred.
The shelling of the hospitals, according to Russia, was orchestrated by Ukrainian forces. However, footage shared by the Associated Press after the attack reveals the extent of the wounds to the individuals seen in the photographs and disproves Russia’s claims of “misinformation.”
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.