“It’s in the basement where people just rot. There is no medication,” he told the Post.
Volyna said morale remains high among his troops even though they are cut off from the outside world and under round-the-clock shelling.
“We save water together, we support each other, try to help each other as much as possible,” he told the Post. “Everyone is ready to continue as one. ,,,We understand everything calmly and we continue to carry out combat missions.”
The shelling, he said, is “'round-the-clock.”
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said a planned humanitarian corridor to evacuate residents of Mariupol by bus "did not work as planned," as Russian shelling continued and the transportation of civilians could not be secured, the German news outlet DW reported.
DW reported that Moscow had made the humanitarian corridor contingent on a surrender before an afternoon deadline on Wednesday, but no such surrender came.
Mariupol city officials had said they were hoping to evacuate about 6,000 people on Wednesday, but only dozens of civilians were able to board a small convoy of buses departing from a planned evacuation point to Ukrainian-controlled territory, Reuters reported.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is prepared to exchange the civilians and military personnel trapped in Mariupol for Russians “under any format,” Ukrainskaya Pravda reported.. Zelenskyy spoke after meeting with the President of the European Council Charles Michel in Kyiv.
"We are prepared for different forms of exchange of our people [in Mariupol] for Russian people, for Russian soldiers who were left behind. They left behind the dead, and they left behind the wounded,” he said.
Mykhailo Podoliak, a presidential adviser, and David Arakhamia, the head of the Ukrainian delegation at peace talks with Russia, said they were ready to go to Mariupol to hold “a special round of negotiations” to arrange the evacuation of Ukrainian troops and civilians, according to The Kyiv Independent encircled in the city.
On Tuesday, Volyna told the Post that his troops do not trust Russian guarantees of safe passage. He said the defenders are well aware that the Russians have made guarantees before, only to break their word and open fire on people.