Russia’s Bombs Target Women in Mariupol
Foreign Policy Brief #148 | By: Yelena Korshunov | March 10, 2022
Header photo taken from nv.ua
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My friend Maria is a New York volunteer who collects clothes, blankets, and medicines for Ukrainian hospitals. She sends it to Poland volunteers, paying for express air shipping from her own pocket. Maria was born in Mariupol. Had you ever heard about this place before the devastating war in Ukraine started? Mariupol was a beautiful green Ukrainian city on the coast of the Sea of Azov. If you travel there before February 24th, 2022, you would love this quiet nice place.
Maria has been living in New York for 20 years, but her parents and siblings with their families live in this Ukrainian city. Such as in any place like Mariupol, adults work, children go to school, friends and families celebrate holidays. Precisely, it was like this before February 24th, 2022.
After that date the entire world was stunned watching news from Ukraine. And today, on March 9th, videos and pictures from Mariupol’s ruined maternity hospital appeared in all the world news. Around 4:30 pm, the Russian invaders dropped several powerful bombs from aircraft on the maternity hospital and a children’s hospital in the center of the city.
As reported by “Ukrainskaya Pravda”, as a result of an air strike on the Mariupol maternity hospital No. 2, 17 people were injured, among them the staff and those who gave birth. “Now there are 17 confirmed wounded among the staff and women in labor. Three people died, among them is a little girl.”, said on Ukrainian TV the head of the Donetsk regional military administration Pavlo Kirilenko.
According to Kirilenko, it is difficult to confirm information about dead civilians and keep any statistics, but as of the morning of March 9th, he was informed of 1207 civilian casualties from Mariupol. Mariupol is under constant bombardment by aircraft and artillery of the Russian forces. Kirilenko reports that for more than a week, the occupiers have been cordoning off the city and frustrating all attempts to evacuate civilians through “humanitarian corridors.”
Mariupol residents report that the Russian military does not allow them to remove corpses from the streets. Mobile and Internet connection is inconsistent.
Representatives of Ukraine filed an official lawsuit with the International Court of Justice on the commission of war crimes against the civilian population by the Russian occupation forces, in particular, the deliberate destruction of hospitals, schools, child care centers, etc. Ukraine president Volodymir Zelensky said today that “what the occupiers are doing to Mariupol is already beyond atrocity. A children’s hospital, a maternity hospital. How did they threaten the Russian Federation?
What kind of country is this – the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, is afraid of maternity hospitals and destroys them? Pregnant women were going to shoot at Rostov? Someone in the maternity hospital humiliated the Russian-speakers? What was that, the denazification of the hospital?” the president asks.
Photos taken from: EBRD Green Cities and nv.ua
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Reportedly, on March 8th, the occupiers offered the residents of Mariupol to evacuate at gunpoint to Rostov-na-Donu in the Russian Federation. What will be the people’s choice? To be the next victims of “Russian peace” in Mariupol or to “evacuate” to Russian territory at gunpoint and cameras of Russian TV reporting how happy these “saved” people will be under the rule of those who killed their friends and relatives?
And how many more newborns and children will be killed and wounded before the world will stop this atrocious war?