UKRAINE: The Mayor of Ukraine’s Mariupol Vadym Boichenko, reduced to ruins by a Russian siege - said sanitation systems were broken and corpses were rotting in the streets.
“There is an outbreak of dysentery and cholera,” Boichenko told national television. “The war which took over 20,000 residents ... unfortunately, with these infection outbreaks, will claim thousands more Mariupolites,” he said, adding some wells had been contaminated by corpses.
Boichenko called on the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to establish a humanitarian corridor to allow remaining residents to leave the city, which is now under Russian control.
In a snapshot of the war’s wider impact, the UN food agency said reduced exports of wheat and other food commodities from Ukraine and Russia could inflict chronic hunger on up to 19 million more people globally over the next year.
Meanwhile, Ukraine pleaded to Western countries for faster deliveries of weapons as better-armed Russian forces pounded the east of the country, and for humanitarian support to combat growing outbreaks of deadly diseases.
In Sievierodonetsk, the small city that has become the focus of Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine and one of the bloodiest flashpoints in a war well into its fourth month, further heavy fighting was reported.
Meanwhile, With no end in sight to the conflict, the Russian authorities on Saturday began handing out passports to the residents living in the occupied city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, news agency Reuters reported citing state-owned local media. Twenty-three Kherson residents have reportedly received their Russian passport at a special event. The development comes as Russia attempts to tighten its hold over the besieged Kherson in a war that has been raging since February. Kherson was one of the first cities that it conquered in the initial days of the war.
- THE HINDUSTAN TIMES
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