Zelensky Makes Desperate Plea For International Help After Russia Bombs Children’s Hospital: ‘You Seem To Be Losing Humanity’
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky shared grim footage of what he says is what is left of a children’s hospital in Mariupol after it was hit by a Russian airstrike.
Ukraine’s regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Wednesday that the airstrike was during an agreed ceasefire that was meant to allow the evacuation of civilians from besieged Mariupol, which is in the throws of a deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe as the large city is without water and basic services.
Kyrylenko said that seventeen people were wounded in the attack, including women in labor, reported Reuters on Wednesday.
“People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity,” Zelensky tweeted above the video of the bombed-out hospital.
Mariupol. Direct strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital. People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity. pic.twitter.com/FoaNdbKH5k
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 9, 2022
Andrii Osadchuck, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, spoke with CNN on Wednesday about the attack on the hospital and the dire situation in Mariupol.
Osadchuck told Kate Bouldan that Russia’s targeting of civilians should not surprise anyone, saying it’s “the same they did in Chechnya, the same they did in Georgia, the same they did in Bosnia and in Donbas Ukraine in 2014, 2015.”
“As soon as they start losing war on the ground, they start using civilians as a tool war,” he argued.
“What I know for sure is it is a nightmare what’s happening in Mariupol the last six or seven days. Mariupol is a huge city, almost 400,000 people now locked inside the city. We did already two or three attempts to evacuate people from Mariupol, but almost all the attempts were stopped by Russians,” he added.
The Russians “still want to surround big cities. They want to create humanitarian crises, Mariupol in particular, and they want to use this as a tool to force the Ukrainian parliament for surrender,” Osadchuck concluded.
Watch the full clip above, via CNN
