We still do not know the sum total of the horror taking place in Mariupol, the city in south-east Ukraine with a pre-war population of more than 400,000.
What was until recently a thriving port city now embodies Russian destruction. A place where water, electricity and heating are cut off amid relentless shelling. Where women and children are trapped under rubble for days and where food and medicine are running short.
The latest civilian atrocity is the bombing of an art school housing 400 civilians. President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “They are under the rubble, and we don’t know how many of them have survived.” There are also reports of Ukrainians being taken over the border into Russia, where an uncertain but terrifying fate awaits them. If war is hell, there must be another, more ghastly term to describe what the people of this city are enduring.
Having shelled its administrative buildings, homes and bomb shelters, Russian forces have demanded the city give itself up this morning. In return, they claimed to offer civilians safe passage out of the city. Such a deal was rejected outright.
Ukrainians have judged that Vladimir Putin, who invaded their country after months of denying any such intent and who has allowed for civilian corridors only for his airforce to render them unusable, cannot be trusted.
Like the Holodomor — Great Famine — of 1932-33 or the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, the destruction of Mariupol that is taking place right now will go down as one of the darkest moments in the history of this continent. Ukrainians, Europeans and the civilised world will not forget.
