Macron looks to help thousands flee stricken Mariupol
French president aims for ‘exceptional humanitarian operation’ as city mayor warns of abductions
EMMANUEL MACRON is preparing to stage an evacuation mission to save tens of thousands of Ukrainians from Mariupol, as mass graves are dug in the besieged port city.
In a move that could put Western boots on the ground in Ukraine for the first time, the French president is expected to seek permission from Vladimir Putin for the rescue effort.
Vadym Boychenko, the mayor of Mariupol, said yesterday that Russian troops had abducted at least 15,000 people and moved them to Kremlincontrolled territory.
Satellite images appeared to show a new camp in the coastal village of Bezimenne, in the separatist-controlled Donetsk region, 11 miles away.
“The occupiers are forcing people already exhausted by the war to get on buses,” Mr Boychenko said on the Telegram messaging app. “There is also information that the Russian occupiers are confiscating passports and other Ukrainian identity documents. The deported people are first taken to socalled filtration camps, from where they are redistributed to various remote cities in Russia,” the mayor added.
As many as 100,000 people are trapped in Mariupol with little access to food, power and heat, facing disease, starvation and continuous shelling from Russian warships in the Sea of Azov and invading ground forces.
It is becoming increasingly clear that those citizens unable to escape the city, which has been reduced to rubble, have nowhere left to hide from the indiscriminate Russian attacks.
After talks with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the mayor of Mariupol, Mr Macron said that France would lead an “exceptional humanitarian operation” to evacuate the city.
“We are going to launch a humanitarian operation in conjunction with Turkey and Greece to evacuate all those who wish to leave Mariupol,” Mr Macron told reporters, after a two-day meeting of EU leaders in Brussels.
He refused to give details of the operation, but insisted he would attempt to win over Mr Putin, whose forces have targeted humanitarian corridors set up to help people leave Mariupol.
“I have a very special thought for the residents of Mariupol,” Mr Macron said, insisting the French-led operation would take place “earlier the better”.
Mr Macron, who is campaigning for re-election next month, has attempted to position himself as Europe’s main interlocutor with the Kremlin and securing safe passage would be seen as a serious coup for him.
Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, said that citizens attempting to flee the city yesterday would have to do so on their own, with Russian troops refusing to let buses leave the area.
A UN team working in Ukraine said there was growing evidence about mass graves in the besieged city, including one that appeared to hold 200 bodies.
Authorities in Mariupol have put the death toll at more than 2,000 and said a single strike last week on a theatre sheltering civilians killed 300 people.
Ten days ago, a theatre believed to have been sheltering at least 1,000 women and children was destroyed in the city. It has now emerged that some of those in the theatre were pregnant women who had just been rescued from
‘They put pregnant women with kids in the dressing rooms. It was in this part that was bombed’
Mariupol’s maternity hospital, which was also hit by Russian airstrikes on March 10.
Diana Berg, who lives next to the theatre but had managed to escape the city before the bombing, told Sky News: “I know that there were pregnant women brought from the maternity ward in the third hospital that was bombed the days before. They put these women with kids in the dressing rooms for actors. It was in this part that was bombed.”
Ms Berg added that there were now so many bodies in Mariupol it was impossible to bury them, and some were hanging from trees.