A police officer in Mariupol has warned that the beleaguered port city will be “wiped off the face of the earth,” and has begged with US and French presidents to provide his country with a modern air defence system.
Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin told President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron in a video posted from a rubble-strewn street that they had promised assistance “but what we have received is not exactly it,” and begged them to save the civilian population.
“Children and the elderly are dying. “The city has been wiped from the face of the planet,” he said in a video shot on Friday and verified by The Associated Press.
Flames can be seen emerging from numerous buildings, while others have been completely destroyed in the city on the Sea of Azov, which had a population of 440,000 people before the Russian invasion. There were also rumoured to be explosions.
“You said there would be assistance, so provide it to us.” You, Vice President Biden, and President Macron, are outstanding leaders. “Be them all the way to the end,” he urged.
According to Vershnin, the city faces the same fate as Aleppo, which was destroyed in 2016 as a result of a Russian-backed siege during Syria’s revolution-turned-civil war. Russia aided Syrian President Bashar Assad’s administration by enforcing harsh sieges around opposition-held areas, shelling and starving them until the population’s ability to resist collapsed.
After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Mariupol saw heavy warfare from Russia-backed separatists, but it was able to repel successive attacks.
