Ukrainian official says city of Izium last received a humanitarian convoy on March 14
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It has been more than two weeks since any food, water, or medicine has arrived in the eastern Ukrainian city of Izium, and the situation "gets worse" by the day, an official told CNN on Tuesday.
Max Strelnyk, a deputy in the Izium city council's office, has been keeping CNN apprised of what is going on in the area. "There's been no pause in the bombing — it started weeks ago — by the Russians," Strelnyk said. He told CNN that while Russia has claimed it will "decrease military operations in the Kyiv and Chernihiv oblasts, Izium and the greater Kharkiv region will have no such luck."
The city is under a Russian blockade, and Strelnyk previously said he believes at least 100 civilians have been killed in the fighting. "In the city, the dead are buried in the central park of our city," he told CNN, a statement the network said it confirmed via video footage. It's been hard to get information out of Izium because Russians are deliberately jamming communications networks, Strelnyk said, and some of his text message exchanges with CNN have been cut short because he's had to race to a bomb shelter.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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