A top official in Mariupol accused Russian forces of taking thousands of Ukrainian citizens against their will across the border into Russia.
Pyotr Andryuschenko, an assistant to the city’s mayor, said that the Mariupol residents had been taken without their passports, and that he feared they could be compelled into forced labour, The New York Times reported.
Aid agencies are being prevented from reaching people trapped in Ukrainian cities surrounded by Russian forces, the UN’s World Food Programme has said.
Emergency coordinator Jakob Kern told AFP that “the challenge is to get to the cities that are encircled or about to be encircled,” describing the situation as “dire”.
He said it has been almost impossible to deliver emergency supplies to the besieged port city of Mariupol, the northeastern city of Kharkiv and the northeastern city of Sumy.
He added that it was a tactic that was “unacceptable in the 21st century”.
