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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMariupol under siege: 'We are being completely cut off'
Link to tweet
Russia's defence ministry urged civilians on Thursday to evacuate the city by a humanitarian corridor, but residents said there had been no break in the shelling to allow people to move.
Communications have been virtually down for two days, residents said, preventing people in the city from reaching one another. Multiple calls to residents either disconnected repeatedly or failed to connect in the first place.
Speaking to the BBC on Thursday morning, the city's deputy mayor Serhiy Orlov said the whole city was now without power, water, or its sanitation system.
"We had 15 main power lines and all of them are now down. We are getting completely cut off - destroyed by artillery. Only the natural gas supply is left," he said.
"Mariupol is still Ukrainian right now, we still control inside the perimeter, but there is fighting on the streets on the outskirts and we are on the line of a humanitarian crisis."
Solly Mack
(90,740 posts)leaving them with no access to food, water, and medical care. Make it so miserable the people are too scared to do anything. Offering a modicum of relief only if they submit. Then the full extent of the subjugation and abuse really begins.
It's what they have done in every conflict in recent memory.
They often slog through the beginning of a conflict but there's a method to their seeming madness and incompetence.
If they can't just roll over a population, they create pockets of isolation and terror, and then branch out from there.
They *punish commensurate, by their own accounting, to the opposing effort to repel them. Kyiv can expect some of the worst to come.
If Russia takes it.
*Russia will claim the people are acting as terrorists, therefore the need for extreme measures.
It's all just horrible.
It can shut the mind down when you think about all the pain and suffering to come. It's very bad now. Unimaginably bad.
But it will get worse.
hippywife
(22,767 posts)My fears have been that he's purposely sent, in his mind, disposable troops and equipment to build a false confidence in both the Ukranians and the world.
Solly Mack
(90,740 posts)had the second wave waiting in the wings.
I think maybe he has also been testing how far the rest of the world will go before the worst begins.
The Ukrainians have been brave, and they continue to be so. It's not a false confidence to recognize that.
It is false thinking to believe that's all it takes.
bluewater
(5,376 posts)The US and NATO need to change the military balance in Ukraine before it's too late.
The heroic Ukrainian resistance cannot hold off, let alone turn back, the Russian invasion only with the hand-held weapons we are sending, no matter how sophisticated those are.
Solly Mack
(90,740 posts)I just don't know how they can be achieved. I know the easy answer - just get in there and fight back against Russia.
I don't think the various world leaders see it that way. If they do, they are keeping it to themselves. Save for Boris Johnson, whose remarks on Ukraine did include - and eventually, militarily.
So that tells me it has probably been discussed, a military response. Though maybe it was Johnson being Johnson and nothing more.
I don't know. Which is really where I'm at with it.
I don't know.
I think of the Cold War and know entire populations have been written off as expendable.
I know that governing bodies, to include the UN and NATO, are only as powerful as the belief in what they profess to believe in is.
I know unprovoked invasions have taken place by "super-powers" with little to no pushback from the various governing bodies. No consequences either.
Governing bodies defined as both governments and joint governmental alliances for the promotion of global security and reducing conflict.
I believe many in power, as in government leaders, sees this as an opportunity to get rid of Putin or to at least marginalize him.
Many are hoping his own people and/or those close to him take him out.
I'm not sure Putin hates the idea of a "new" cold war.
Putin also has no problem attacking his own population and prominent/well known/connected people there fall out of windows all the time.
Putin has made his intentions clear - of that no one can feign surprise.
I don't worry so much about ICBMs as I do Putin opting to drop a tactical nuke on Ukraine. Because he can and he's a because I can kind of megalomaniac.
I know a lot of people's first response to that statement is the world would respond in force but I'm not so sure.
How sad is that? (That I'm not so sure)
But then many atrocities have occurred with nothing more than condemnations and blistering words amounting to nothing.
I do think a delicate balance game is being played out. But not everything on the scale is what's morally right v. what's morally wrong. It's there - the right thing to do, but it's simply not the only consideration.
I don't know if I'm making sense.
Sorry for that.
I'm sickened by what is happening and I feel helpless.
Mostly, I just don't know. Which is part of the helplessness.
I'm not dead certain, so I don't have the comfort of feeling absolute and righteous in my own opinion.
I'm sad and I don't know.
I am grateful Trump is not president.
That, I know.
bluewater
(5,376 posts)I just don't want to see the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian army and people be used as cannon fodder in a war they cannot win as pawns in a geo-political power struggle.
Best regards.
Solly Mack
(90,740 posts)Which is what I fear as well.
Didn't start out that way but it did present the opportunity.
Sadly.
hippywife
(22,767 posts)I think it will give you some hope that nations are going to step up militarily, just as they have on sanctions and humanitarian aid. As I suggested to someone else, if you don't have time to listen to all of it, at least listen through both Roberta Metsola's and Ursula von der Leyen's speeches.
Solly Mack
(90,740 posts)hippywife
(22,767 posts)bluewater
(5,376 posts)Tragic, but true.
Russia seems to be surrounding the major Ukrainian cities and picking them off one by one.
While media attention has been focused on Kyiv, the Russian invasion has been seizing strategic cities along the Black Sea.
See my OP on this : https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216433625