ONCE a seaside destination, a celebrated place of culture and a beacon of healthcare, the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has now been thrown back into the Middle Ages.
As you walk through the devastated city, bodies and pieces of bodies are still strewn on the ground, amongst the debris and putrid stagnant water pools.
Queues of Mariupol residents wait in the scorching sun to collect water in plastic buckets, bulldozers try to clear devastated buildings, while the injured and the ill make their way to the hospital, where there is no help to be received.
Some residents are forced to drink sewage as there is little to no clean water, and bodies are now often left to rot in piles of rubbish rather than being buried in graves.
And there is a chronic lack of medicines, with doctors being left with no choice but to amputate limbs to stop disease.
It is estimated at least 90 per cent of the buildings in the city have either been destroyed or damaged – and at least 300,000 civilians have fled or been killed.
