TOPACCOLADE NEWS

Mariupol, a port city in south eastern Ukraine, is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

It's location between the Donetsk Peoples Republic (DPR) and the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula, means that it was a victim of location as the war started and the city was encircled and shelled.

The city has seen it's fare share of invaders: The British during the Crimean War, the Austro-Hungarians in WW1, and the Nazis in WW2 all come to mind.

But the locals said that “Even the Nazis weren't this brutal”, as the city is now decorated with the blackened husks of tower blocks and crumbling sky scrapers.

Mariupol has over the course of a month turned from a prosperous port city, into a Slavic Dickensian London.

With residents unable to gain access to clean drinking water, medieval living conditions, dead bodies littering the streets, and starved civilians who's appearance would make one believe that they're zombies.

The city has seen some of the highest civilian deaths of the war, civilians have been killed by collapsing buildings, shelling, bombing, starvation, and at worst being murdered by one of their own.

As well as war crimes involving the shelling of a maternity hospital and the local Drama Theatre, where 300 people were confirmed to have been killed despite “Children” being written in Russian outside the building.

The Russians show no signs of cutting Mariupol or it's remaining inhabitants a break, and with forces being relocated east from Kiev and Chernobyl, it looks like the shelling isn't slated to halt any time soon.