Greek diplomat: Mariupol will join the list of addicts completely destroyed by war (Getty)
The Greek Consul General in the city of Ukrainian Mariupolthe last European Union diplomat to leave the besieged coastal city, said Sunday that the city joins other cities devastated by war.
And Manolis Andrulakis helped dozens of Greeks and people of Greek descent to get out of the devastated city since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He left Mariupol on Tuesday following a four-day journey through Ukraine, following which he crossed into Romania, via Moldova, with ten other Greeks.
“What I’ve seen, I hope no one will ever see,” Androlakis said upon his arrival Sunday at Athens International Airport and reunited with his family. He added: “Mariopol will join the list of cities completely destroyed by the war, and I do not need to name them, they are Guernica, Coventry, Aleppo, Grozny and Leningrad.”
The Greek foreign ministry says Androlakis was the last EU diplomat to leave Mariupol, where many residents have been trapped under heavy bombardment for more than two weeks as Russian forces seek to seize the city.
Ukraine’s Mariupol city council said Russian forces forcibly removed several thousand from the besieged city last week, following Russia reported the arrival of “refugees” from the strategic port.
The Donetsk region’s governor, Pavlo Kirilenko, said in a television interview on Sunday that fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces is taking place inside the port city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine.
Many of Mariupol’s 400,000 residents have been trapped for more than two weeks as Russia seeks to seize the city, aiming to help secure a land corridor to Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
(Archyde.com, The New Arab)
