War in Ukraine: Russian troops take hundreds hostage in Mariupol hospital

Russian soldiers have taken hundreds of civilians hostage at a hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol, the regional governor has reported.

“Russian occupiers have taken doctors and patients hostage,” Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of Donetsk Oblast, wrote on his Telegram channel. He said one of the hostages told local officials that the Russians had herded about 400 civilians into the hospital and were preventing anyone from leaving.

“We can’t get out of the hospital,” the unnamed hostage was reported to have said. “They’re shooting a lot. We’re sitting in the cellar.”

Mariupol, a port city of 420,000 people near the Russian border, has been under almost constant bombardment for two weeks. It has become a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance, and of the appalling human costs of the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.

One report indicated that Russian soldiers were using windows as sniper positions. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), whose workers have been in Mariupol throughout the siege, said conditions in the city were “dire”.

Sasha Volkov, the ICRC’s leader in the city, said: “The sound of warfare is constant. Buildings are struck and shrapnel flies everywhere. This is the situation every person in the city faces.”

Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to President Zelensky, said that the Russian bombardment had killed 2,500 civilians. Aerial footage released by both sides has shown a devastated city with few buildings left intact.

Access to the port is limited and aid and basic provisions are thought to be running extremely low. There have been suggestions that disease is spreading. One report said that people were bleeding radiators to drink the water.

Military experts have said that the siege is reminiscent of Russia’s campaigns in Syria and Chechnya, where Aleppo and Grozny were bombarded into submission. The civilian populations suffered huge losses.

“What’s happening in Mariupol is very much in character with the way the Russian military dealt with Aleppo and Grozny,” Mark Galeotti, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said. “This is how you do urban warfare on the cheap, if you aren’t confident in the training or morale of your soldiers. And the last few weeks have shown the Russian army isn’t exactly thriving in Ukraine.”

Iryna Vereshchuk, the Ukrainian deputy prime minister, said yesterday that a convoy taking aid to Mariupol had been stuck at the nearby Russian-held port of Berdyansk. She accused Russia of lying about fulfilling agreements to help trapped civilians.

Throughout sporadic negotiations between the two sides, humanitarian corridors for residents to leave besieged cities have been key. Although civilians in other cities, including Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv, have been able to get to safety, corridors out of Mariupol have collapsed repeatedly. Ukraine has accused Russians of firing deliberately on the agreed routes.

Some residents have been able to flee this week. The city council reported yesterday that 20,000 civilians had left along a humanitarian corridor that ran for more than 160 miles west to the city of Zaporizhzhia. Another 2,000 cars were waiting to leave along the route, the council said.

Mobile phone reception and internet access are reported to be intermittent in Mariupol, complicating communications with the outside world.

Groups of Mariupol residents using Telegram, the encrypted messenger app that is popular in many post-Soviet countries, are seeking information on missing relatives. They are also trading information on the situation in different neighbourhoods, and providing a window into life in a European city under siege.

“Help me find my husband and mother-in-law,” Tatiana Gokh wrote on one group, with several thousand members. “I’ve had no contact since March 2. They live on the left bank,” she added, referring to the eastern half of the city, which has been the focus of Russian attacks.

The port is an overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city close to the pre-invasion front line with the Donetsk People’s Republic. It became the focus of intense fighting during the initial war in the Donbas, from 2014 to 2015.

For one month in the summer of 2014, Kremlin-backed separatists occupied the city, before the Ukrainian army restored Kyiv’s control.

This time, Mariupol was among the first cities to come under attack by the Russian forces.

It has been cut off from Ukrainian-held territory since early this month, when Russian forces broke out of the annexed Crimea peninsula to occupy much of Ukraine’s Azov Sea coast, and link up with the separatist-controlled Donbas.