Catastrophic”: the humanitarian situation is worsening in large Ukrainian cities, still under fire from Russian strikes, while kyiv has called on China, Moscow’s strategic ally, to “condemn Russian barbarism”.
In Mariupol, a strategic city in the south-east of Ukraine – bombarded for several weeks and suffering from a shortage of water, gas and electricity – families told of the corpses lying in the streets for several days, the hunger, thirst and the biting cold of nights spent in cellars with sub-zero temperatures.
A group of 19 children, most of them orphans, are “in great danger”, stranded in a sanatorium, their guardians having been unable to recover them because of the fighting, their relatives and witnesses told AFP on Saturday.