Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias has proposed leading a humanitarian aid mission to the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.
Dendias told a news conference in Athens on March 22 to honor Manolis Androulakis, the last European diplomat to leave the battered city, that he had already been in touch with the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross on coordinating efforts to deliver aid.
"I sent a note verbale to the Ukrainian side asking for the facilitation of the delivery of humanitarian aid in Mariupol and another note verbale to the Russian side asking not to obstruct it," he said, adding "I intend to accompany this aid in person."
Since launching its invasion on February 24, Russia has pounded Mariupol with air strikes and heavy artillery in an attempt to take the strategically important city, which would give Moscow a land link between the Crimean Peninsula, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and areas of eastern Ukraine currently controlled by Russia-backed separatists.
After weeks of bombardment, Ukrainian forces are still battling Russian troops in the streets, with more than 200,000 civilians said to be trapped without water, electricity, and dwindling food supplies.
Eyewitness accounts say dead bodies are strewn about the streets, with the local city council accusing the Russians on March 22 of pounding the city into the "ashes of a dead land."
Androulakis, Greece's consul general in Mariupol, where many Greek sailors were trapped by the fighting, led six operations to evacuate his countrymen.