Greece is currently running five operations to evacuate Greek citizens, their relatives, and other nationalities from Odessa, Kyiv and Mariupol on Greek-owned ships, Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Alexandros Papaioannou stated in a press conference on Wednesday (local time).
Mr Papaioannou thanked the remaining diplomatic staff in Ukraine, the Greek embassy in Bucharest and officials at the ministry in Athens for their outstanding assistance and work.
“Greece is working closely on coordination with OSCE and the International Committe of the Red Cross,” he said, adding that “Foreign Affairs Minister Nikos Dendias has carried out a very busy schedule of contacts in Athens and abroad on the Russian invasion of the Ukraine during the last two weeks”
According to Mr Papaioannou many of the minister’s appointments abroad have been cancelled as humanitarian corridor missions to evacuate civilians from Ukraine fail.
The building of the Consulate General of Greece in Mariupol has been damaged as a result of missile and bomb attacks by the Russian army, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has confirmed. The office of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine was also damaged, while the consulates of Slovenia, Azerbaijan and Albania in Kharkiv were completely destroyed.
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
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 9, 2022
At the same time, Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has accused Russia of carrying out an air strike that severely damaged a maternity hospital in the southern port city of Mariupol.
President Zelensky said that “the direct strike on the hospital had caused colossal damage and left women and children trapped under rubble”.
We strongly condemn shelling of the premises of foreign diplomatic missions in Ukraine by Russia’s armed forces. All facts of destruction will be added to the international lawsuits against Russia to bring perpetrators to account.https://t.co/y5025DlM0f pic.twitter.com/tdCbFyVxHK
— MFA of Ukraine 🇺🇦 (@MFA_Ukraine) March 8, 2022
The Mariupol city council said the hospital had been hit several times in what the White House called a “barbaric use of military force to go after innocent civilians”.
The destruction took place despite a Russian pledge to halt firing so at least some trapped civilians could escape the city, where hundreds of thousands have been sheltering without water or power for more than a week, Reuters reported.
“What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, is afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a televised address late on Wednesday (local time).
