Ukrainians in the besieged city of Mariupol have been forced to kill and eat dogs due to the lack of food, it has been reported.
The southern port city has been bombarded for most of the past month and is now surrounded by Russian forces, which are stopping crucial supplies getting in.
Dmytro, a businessman who left the city on Tuesday, said that people in Mariupol are now resorting to desperate measures.
“You hear the words but it’s impossible to really take them in, to believe this is happening,” he told the FT on claims that people are having to eat dogs.
“It is hell on earth.”
Since February 24, Mariupol has been transformed from a thriving port city to a vast stretch of ruin, buildings reduces to rubble and the dead left in the street.
Two of the worst atrocities of the war so far have taken place there.
The Russians shelled a maternity hospital, killing at least four people including a child, and a theatre.
More than 1,000 people were trapped underneath the blown up building for days as they were sheltering in it at the time of the bombing.
Before International Red Cross workers were evacuated from the city for their safety this week, they reported back on scenes of devastation, desperate hunger and vanishing medical supplies.
The Russians ordered that the Ukrainians surrender the city on Sunday, but their demands were refused.
Fighting has now broken through defences on the outskirts of Mariupol and is now raging on the city streets.
Russian forces are already in control of Livoberezhnyi Raion, or left-bank district, in the east of the city, as well as Mikroraiony 17-23, a string of residential neighbourhoods in the north-east.
Its residents are not the only ones who have been left alarmingly low on supplies due to the Russian invasion
Food and medical supplies onboard over 100 foreign flagged ships stuck in Ukraine due to are running low, with little progress on creating a maritime corridor to allow them to sail away, industry officials said today.
London's marine insurance market has widened the area of waters it considers high risk in the region as the conflict intensifies and perils to merchant shipping grow.
The UN's shipping agency said this month it would work to create a safe maritime corridor for merchant ships and crews stuck in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.
Five merchant vessels have been hit by projectiles - with one of them sunk - off Ukraine's coast.
Some foreign crew members that were onboard ships have been evacuated out of Ukraine, said Guy Platten, Secretary General with the International Chamber of Shipping industry association.
But there are still around 140 foreign flagged vessels with over 1,000 mariners from 20 countries that are unable to leave because of the fighting.
"Seafarers...have become the collateral damage in the conflict," he told a virtual news briefing.
Platten said one Romanian ship with 20 seafarers had only three days' worth of supplies left due to fighting in the port city of Mariupol.
"It is unsafe for them to leave the ship or for the ship to sail," he said, adding that various organisations were trying to resupply the ships with essentials.
Platten said at least two seafarers had been killed due to the fighting although full figures were still being corroborated.
Stephen Cotton, General Secretary with the International Transport Workers' Federation union, said there were "high levels of anxiety" among foreign crews as supplies dwindle.
Cotton said: "We have to recognise there is competition for food depending on which ports you are in on the coast.
"It is literally a matter of life and death for some Ukrainians still locked in defending their cities."
