Ukraine a “living hell”, says United Nations chief

Ukrainians are going through a “living hell”, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday, in what he termed an unwinnable war in Ukraine, the Guardian reported. “Sooner or later it will have to move from the battlefields to the peace table”, Guterres said of the war. “That is inevitable. The only question is how many more lives must be lost?” The UN chief mentioned what he called “systematic bombardments that terrorise civilians”.

Moreover, the effects of the hostilities will be felt worldwide, he explained, due to the skyrocketing prices of food, energy and fertiliser – which could all add up to a worldwide hunger crisis.

The BBC reported that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday there was “nothing left” of Ukraine’s southern besieged port city of Mariupol, which has been described as a “freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings”. A senior official from the US Defence Department told Foreign Policy that there were over 200,000 people still trapped in the city. Ukrainian officials have urged Russia to allow humanitarian supplies into the city and the opening of a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians, writes Al Jazeera.

Occupied by Russian forces, the 300,000 people in the southern city of Kherson are running out of food and medicine, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry told the Guardian. Meanwhile, Euronews reports that Ukrainian forces have retaken a suburb of Kyiv, Makariv.

In a video message on Monday night President Zelensky said Ukraine’s army had pushed back Russian forces. That take was backed by the UK’s Ministry of Defence, which opined that Russian forces appeared to be “stalled in place”, writes the BBC, with Ukraine “continuing to repulse” attempts to occupy the besieged southern city of Mariupol.

The UNHCR reported on Tuesday that over 3.5 million people had fled Ukraine, with more than 2.1 million of them having gone to Poland, followed by Romania (540,000) and Moldova (367,000), according to reporting by Euronews. Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration said there are about 6.5 million internally displaced Ukrainians within the country, many of whom could also flee Ukraine if hostilities continue.

On Wednesday, the European Commission will deliberate on how to provide access to work, schooling and housing to those arriving from Ukraine. Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic said the EU needed to make sure it had the capacity to assist arrivals, who’ve received temporary protection, including residency and the right to work, writes the Guardian.

Source: Euronews, BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian