The dire fate of Mariupol is a warning to other Ukrainian cities

a devastating humanitarian crisis unfold in Ukraine,” laments Peter Maurer, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross. “Casualty figures keep rising while health facilities struggle to cope. Civilians staying in underground shelters tell us that they fled shells falling directly overhead.” His wording is vague because no one, the included, knows exactly how many Ukrainians are in this situation. Before the Russian invasion roughly 260,000 people lived in the city of Sumy; 280,000 in Chernihiv; 430,000 in Mariupol; 475,000 in Mykolaiv and 1.4m in Kharkiv. All are now besieged by Russian forces. The invaders have nearly surrounded the capital, Kyiv, once home to some 4m people. Even assuming that much of the population of these cities has already fled, the number of Ukrainian civilians caught in the crossfire, with no safe way to escape, is in the millions.The city enduring the most is Mariupol, a port on the south coast in province. It has been on the front line since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists seized chunks of the province. Mariupol remained under the control of the government, which worked hard not just to fix the damage of war but also to spruce up the city to make obvious the benefits of remaining a part of Ukraine. Some 100,000 refugees from decaying and gang-run separatist cities to the east flocked to Mariupol for a new life.