Russia-Ukraine war: No water or power across city, says Mariupol mayor

The mayor of the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko, on Saturday stated that the city does not have electricity for five days and they have no water left now. He also added that they had not recovered the dead.

According to media reports, Boichenko claimed the situation was extremely complicated and that the Russian army had already erected a barrier on the humanitarian corridor. "We have a lot of social problems," he said in a YouTube interview, that all Russians are responsible.

Mariupol, a city of roughly 400,000 people, has been without power for the past five days. Boichenko explained that all of their thermal substations rely on the power supply. Therefore, they confirmed they were without heat. 

The mayor went on to add that there were no cell networks and that they had lost their reserve water supply since the Russian attack on Mariupol, leaving the city entirely without water.

Boichenko accused the Russian army of enveloping the city and erecting a blockade to cut it off from the humanitarian corridor. He added that the Russian troops aim to block them off from the humanitarian corridor, preventing crucial products, medical supplies, and even baby food from reaching them. 

Their purpose is to block the city and place it under unbearable stress; Boichenko further added that the number of wounded and dead has risen in the past few days, numbering in thousands. He fears the situation further is only going to deteriorate. 

Boichenko remarked that they (Russian) claims to protect Ukrainians from the Ukrainian (state), but they (Russian) are the ones who are killing. He added they praised the brave doctors who have been saving lives in the city for the last ten days, adding that the doctors live and sleep in the hospitals with their families. Boichenko asserted about the humanitarian corridor, which had been cancelled on Saturday. 

He said they had 50 buses full of fuel and are just waiting for a ceasefire and the roads to open to get people out of here. However, now they are down to just 30 buses. They hid those buses in another location, away from the shelling, and lost another ten there. So they are down to 20 now. The mayor said they might not have any buses to evacuate people once the humanitarian corridor finally opens.

He went on to say that all of these talks are lies. He added all of this is being done to ruin them as a nation; he said this previously a thousand times. The mayor claimed that the city's morale was strong but that they were "barely hanging on." He also claimed that Mariupol was no longer a city. He responded, at least the city you've ever seen.

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• Mariupol
• Russia
• Russia-Ukraine crisis
• Russia-Ukraine war
• Ukraine
• Vadym Boichenko