In what remains of Mariupol, Ukraine’s once-thriving port city, burned building carcasses stand amid lush greenery. Russian airstrike destroys Mariupol After weeks of siege and strikes, much of the city on the Sea of Azov’s coast has been left to ruins.
Passers-by wept as the remaining Ukrainian troops in the town surrendered to the Russians at the bombed-out Azovstal steel complex.
Angela Kopytsa, 52, a bleached-haired woman, said she saw no future for herself in Mariupol.
“There is no work, no food, no water,” she said, adding that both her home and life had been “destroyed.”
Since early March, the city has been without power.
Kopytsa sobs as she recalls having to share scraps of food with her children and grandson during the war, and how “children in maternity units were dying of hunger.”
“What future?” she said in Russian. “I have no hope for anything.”
Three months of violence in Mariupol has forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee for their lives, causing immense pain and death.
Russia has promised to reconstruct the city and convert it into a beach resort.
Journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP) visited Mariupol as part of a press tour organized by the Russian army, but they were not permitted to approach the massive Azovstal steel complex, which has become a symbol of intense Ukrainian resistance.
The previous weeks’ nonstop fighting has ceased, and the Russian army and its separatist allies are now patrolling the streets of the ruined city, which had a population of more than 500,000 people before the start of the conflict.
Elena Ilyina, a former university professor in Mariupol, sobs as she tells AFP about her life, claiming that her flat was destroyed and that she now lives with her daughter.
“I have nothing left,” said the 55-year-old, adding that even the clothes she wears have been given to her by “sympathetic people.” Russian airstrike destroys Mariupol
Ilyina stated that she wishes to reclaim her former life.
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