Mariupol says 15,000 deported from besieged city to Russia
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[March 24, 2022]
LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) - Ukrainian
authorities in besieged Mariupol said on Thursday about 15,000 civilians
had been illegally deported to Russia since Russian forces seized parts
of the southern port city.
Ukrainian officials say civilians trapped in Mariupol, which is normally
home to about 400,000 people, face a desperate plight without access to
food, water, power or heat.
Local authorities said on Sunday that thousands of residents had been
taken by force across the border but did not provide a more precise
figure. Russian news agencies said at the time that buses had carried
several hundred people Moscow calls refugees from Mariupol to Russia in
recent days.
"Residents of the Left Bank district are beginning to be deported en
masse to Russia. In total, about 15,000 Mariupol residents have been
subjected to illegal deportation," Mariupol city council said in a
statement issued on Thursday.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Mar/24/images/ads/current/culligan_sda_SFARM_2022.png)
Russia denies targeting civilians in what President Vladimir Putin calls
a "special military operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine.
Ukraine and the West say Putin launched an unprovoked war of aggression.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told a video briefing that
Ukrainian authorities were continuing efforts to secure agreement from
Russia to open a safe corridor to and from Mariupol.
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![](../images/032422PIX/news_x49.jpg)
A Russian army soldier stands next to local residents who queue for
humanitarian aid delivered during Ukraine-Russia conflict, in the
besieged southern port of Mariupol, Ukraine March 23, 2022.
REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Mar/24/images/ads/current/collins_lda_SFARM_2022.png) Each side has blamed the other for
the repeated failure to agree on arrangements to evacuate civilians
from Mariupol, control of which would help Russia secure a land
corridor to the Crimea peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in
2014.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address to
Italy's parliament on Tuesday that there was "nothing left" in
Mariupol after weeks of Russian bombardment.
A Reuters team that reached a Russian-controlled part of Mariupol on
Sunday described a wasteland of charred apartment blocks and bodies
wrapped in blankets lying by a road.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Writing by Timothy Heritage, Editing
by Nick Macfie)
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