Mariupol Mayor: Thousands forced to relocate to Russia – ‘We are living again in the Hitler era’

The mayor of Mariupol said on Saturday that thousands of residents of his city had been forced by Russian occupation forces to move to Russia.

In a message to Telegram, Vadym Boychenko, reported that many of them, after being transferred to Russian territory, are driven to remote cities deeper in Russia, while the fate of others remains unknown.

The British network BBC reports that it has not yet managed to confirm the allegations of the Ukrainian mayor.

“What the occupiers are doing today is familiar to the older generation, who lived through the horrific events of World War II, when the Nazis brutally captured people,” Boychenko said.

“It is difficult to imagine that in the 21st century, people would be forcibly relocated to another country from their homeland,” he added.

Some 300,000 people are trapped inside the city, with food and medical supplies running low, and the Russian occupation army has blocked the entry of convoys with humanitarian aid.

The Russian attacks have hit a hospital, a church and countless houses and buildings, with local officials estimating that 80% of homes have been either completely damaged or destroyed, with a third of them unrepairable.

Mariupol has been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting since the day Russia invaded Ukraine three weeks ago.

The location of the city in the Sea of ​​Azov is a strategy for the Russian Putin regime, as, if the city is occupied, a territorial bridge is created between the Russian territory, the pro-Russian separatist “republics” of Donetsk and Lugansk and the Ukrainian Kherson Peninsula. , which has been under Russian occupation since 2014 and has even been “officially” annexed to Russia.