A website dedicated to finding missing relatives in Mariupol offered a renewed sense of hope in Ukraine’s months-long war.
Dmitry Cherepanov, a computer programmer and a native of Mariupol, created the Mariupol Life website after fleeing the city with his family following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine nearly three months ago.
Even after he left, Cherepanov still wondered who was left.
“I am also looking for many friends with whom I have lost contact,” he told CTV National News in Ukrainian.
“I hope this website will help me and many others. For example, I found out that one of my friends died there.
Its online newsletter allows users to track missing people and leave messages, with thousands of people visiting the website in just over a week.
The search for more than 1,000 people is still ongoing as of Sunday, with roughly equal numbers said to have left the city. At least seven people in the forum have been confirmed dead.
“This gives them a tool in which they can publish who they are looking for or who they have unfortunately lost,” Cherepanov said. “It can also become a wall of memory for those we lost in this terrible war.
Located on the Sea of Azov in the southeastern part of the country, Mariupol has witnessed fierce fighting since the beginning of the war.
Ukrainian forces and civilians are now hiding in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, and Russian troops have occupied the rest of the city.
It is estimated that there are still more than 100,000 people in Mariupol, which is less than the city’s pre-war population of about 430,000. The rest have coped with the constant lack of food, water and heat.
Since then, Putin has declared victory in the city as his troops gather in the country’s eastern Donbass region, where separatist forces in Donetsk and Luhansk have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on the West for more weapons.
During a press conference Saturday night at a metro station in Kyiv, Zelensky announced a planned visit by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
“Today you cannot come to us empty-handed and we are not just expecting gifts or cakes, we are expecting concrete things and concrete weapons,” Zelenski said.
The White House has not yet commented on Sunday’s visit.
With files from the Associated Press
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