Half a million people in the tenth-largest city in Ukraine are living without electricity for days after it came under siege from Russian forces.

ELN attended today an online media briefing by DTEK Chief Executive Officer Maxim Timchenko who spoke about the current situation regarding energy security in Ukraine.

Mr Timchenko said: “Marioupol is surrounded by troops three days – the city has half a million population and all these people are fully disconnected from the electricity grid.

“They have no electricity supply at all. So, it means that people live there, experience this situation for two days already.

“We cannot do anything with that because our people cannot restore any transmission lines without permission from military forces. We do not have any permission as of today.

“Of course, we have some resource capacity and generators but it will finish within hours. So this is a disaster for the city and we already sent a lot of requests about a so-called “green corridor.

“I don’t know how long the situation can continue like this and people can survive without electricity.”