Monday 7 March:
• The city is again under heavy fire after a temporary ceasefire and a large-scale evacuation failed over the weekend.
• The International Red Cross awaits notification that a humanitarian corridor will be opened. Almost half of the city’s 430 thousand inhabitants want to flee, according to the Red Cross. There is a shortage of everything. “Houses are on fire, everyone is in air-raid shelters,” said Jelena Zamaj, who managed to flee. ‘There are no connections, no water, no gas, no light. There is nothing.’
• ‘They destroy everything’, mayor Vadim Bojchenko told Reuters news agency about the continuous heavy Russian shelling. “They don’t even give us the opportunity to count the dead and wounded.” There are corpses in the streets that cannot be removed. AP journalists witness doctors in hospitals trying unsuccessfully to save injured children. Operations are performed without anesthesia because there is a shortage of everything.
• Residents loot shops in search of food and water. Snow is melted to get water.
• Russia declares a ceasefire to start in the morning for the evacuation of residents. “The situation is very dangerous,” said Dominik Stillhart of the Red Cross, after a team evacuating residents found out that the road was full of mines. “They have even laid mines on the routes that are used to bring food and medicine to the population, to the children of Mariupol,” said Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky.
• Ukraine accuses the Russian army of ‘medieval tactics’. And the Pentagon says the Russians are trying to surround the city.
Tuesday March 8:
• The Russian UN ambassador says that corridors will be opened from the morning to evacuate Mariupol, among other things. Deputy Mayor Orlov tells the BBC that places where residents have to gather for the evacuation are being shelled by the Russians. “Nothing has changed this morning. The city is still under a blockade.’
• ‘The ceasefire is being violated,’ said a spokesman for the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The pressure on Russia must be increased.”
• Zelenski announces in a video message that a child in the city has died of dehydration. ‘In 2022, died of dehydration…’ Mayor Bojchenko pays tribute on social media to 6-year-old Tanya, the child who, according to authorities, died of dehydration after her house was hit by a shelling. Her mother died in this. In the last minutes of her life she was alone, exhausted, scared and thirsty. “This is just one of many stories from Mariupol, which has been under a blockade for eight days.”
• The US says that the Russians have not yet moved into the city.
• A video from the city shows women and children taking shelter in a basement while artillery fire can be heard. ‘Why shouldn’t I cry?’, says Goma Janna. ‘I want my house back, my work. I feel so bad for the residents, for the city, for the children.’ A soldier also calls on the population not to panic and not to steal. ‘Let us be united’.
• In the evening, Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk reports that it has not been possible to evacuate residents due to the heavy shelling. She calls the corridors leading to Russia and Belarus unacceptable. The Russian army says the shelling will be stopped from 10 a.m. Wednesday to allow an evacuation.
• ‘The situation in Mariupol is apocalyptic’, said the spokesman for the Red Cross. The city council plans to bury the dead in mass graves. Resident Lyudmila Amelkina tells AP news agency that the destruction of the city is enormous. She is also hungry. “We have nothing to eat.”
Wednesday March 9:
• Ukraine’s mission to the UN mission says the Russians are “holding hostage” residents of Mariupol and other cities. “If they try to leave the city, the Russians open fire and they are killed,” Natalya Mudrenko told the Security Council.
• Russia again reports that the evacuation can start. “We will observe a time of silence,” said a senior Defense official. Ukraine says it will try to evacuate residents of Mariupol until the evening, as well as residents of other cities via five other corridors.
• The Red Cross in Mariupol sounds the alarm again about the situation in the city. “People get water from the roofs after it rains,” said Alexei Berntsev from the city. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Koeleba also draws attention to the plight of the residents. “Nearly 3,000 newborn babies have no medicine or food,” Koeleba said on Twitter. ‘Russia is holding more than 400,000 people hostage.’
• A mass grave has been dug in an old cemetery in the center. About thirty bodies are buried.
• President Zelensky accuses Russia of bombing a children’s hospital and maternity hospital. “An atrocity,” the president said. Images show that the destruction is enormous. According to authorities, among the 17 injured are pregnant women. The Kremlin denies being behind the airstrike because the Russian army does not hit civilian targets.
• The air strike is strongly condemned internationally. “Terrible and reckless,” said British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. Prime Minister Johnson said the Russian president would be held “responsible for his horrific crimes”. The defense ministry in Moscow says it is Kyiv’s fault that the evacuation of residents has not started.
• Russia calls the accusation that it was behind the airstrike ‘fake news’.
Thursday March 10:
• Ukraine says a humanitarian convoy headed for the city had to turn around amid heavy fighting. According to Kyiv, Russia is deliberately thwarting the humanitarian corridor. According to the city council, the city is again under Russian fire.
• Authorities report that three people, including a child, were killed in the airstrike on the children’s hospital and maternity hospital.
• Ukrainians are again trying to contact relatives in the city. Parliamentarian Dmitro Gurin heard from neighbors four days ago that his parents were safe in their basement. “Can you imagine?” he tells the BBC. “Your parents of 67 and 69 drinking snow and cooking on a fire in the middle of winter during shelling.”
• The reports of the mass graves are worrying many. Diana Berg fled with her husband Mariupol on Friday and has not heard from her mother-in-law and friends since. “They could be buried in the mass graves,” she told the BBC.