Roughly 1,300 Ukrainians are still trapped under the rubble of a bombed theatre in Mariupol in the south-east of the country.
However, one Ukrainian politician warned that without the rescue services to save them, they were buried alive, destined to die down there.
The shocking news comes days after the theatre was first hit by a Russian air strike on Wednesday.
Ukrainian human rights ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said today that so far 130 people had been rescued from the rubble.
In a televised address she said that rescue work was ongoing.
Serhiy Taruta, a Ukrainian politician, confirmed this and said hundreds remained unaccounted for.
He added that they cannot be evacuated because the rescue services in the city had been decimated by Russian forces.
In a Facebook post he wrote: "No one understands. Services that are supposed to help are demolished, rescue and utility services... are physically destroyed.
"A lot of doctors have been killed. This means that all the survivors of the bombing will either die under the ruins of the theater, or have already died."
Over a thousand people were sheltering at the theatre in one of Ukraine ’s worst hit cities, when it was struck.
Over 350,000 Ukrainian remains in the besieged city, surviving Russian bombing attacks, officials have said.
Svitlana Zlenko, who fled the city with her son on Tuesday, a day before the theatre was bombing, described Mariupol as "hell".
She described how she was forced to melt snow to get water to cook pasta and they lived in constant fear of Russian air raids.
She spent some of her last days in the city sheltering in a school, and described the moment a woman was wounded during a bombing, when shrapnel hit her hip.
She said: "She was lying on the first floor of the high school all night and prayed for poison so that she would not feel pain.
"[She] was taken by the Red Cross within a day, I pray to God she is well."
Many in Mariupol are without food or medicine with humanitarian corridors in, being shelled by Russian forces.
Ms Zlenko added: "The dead are not taken out. Police recommend to the relatives of those who died of a natural death, to open the windows and lay the bodies on the balcony.
"I know you think you understand, but you will never understand unless you were there."
The bombed theatre had the words “children” written in Russian in front and behind it, to try and warn off Russian bombers and missile strikes to the vulnerable inside.
However, Putin’s forces still laid waste to the shelter in a merciless attack that has characterised Moscow’s approach as their invasion continues to stutter and make little progress.
Only today, a Russian missile struck an airport near the western city of Lviv, where hundreds of thousands had found refuge from the Russian forces.
In light of the failed reported ‘lightning invasion’ where the Kremlin had hoped to take the country, and capital in a few days, Russia has resorted to relentless shelling and bombings of civilian targets.
However, today, in a Ministry of Defence intelligence update, they confirmed that across this week Russia had made little progress, in spite of its ruthless air raids.
This was in part due to fierce Ukrainian opposition which has killed four Russian generals and over a dozen leading officers in three weeks of fighting.
US President Joe Biden is due to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping at 1pm this afternoon.
This meeting will be held in hope to bring one of the two powers yet to denounce Russia, on side with the west.
India is the only other power yet to publicly condemn Putin or Russia.
Despite reports that Russia had been begging China for military aid and assistance to sidestep aid, recent noises from the eastern power has suggested it does not want to be tied to Putin and his oligarchic mafia state.
Since the start of the invasion, more than 3.2million people have been forced to flee their homes and leave Ukraine.
As of today, the United Nations Human Rights Commission said that 3,270,662 people had left the country.
Over half of these, 1,975,449, had entered Poland, and it is unknown how many stayed her or moved on to other countries.
In the past few days, reports suggest border crossings have slowed, but as food chains continue to collapse and the conflict threatens to worsen, the streams of refugees could pick up once more.
