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LVIV, Ukraine – after Russian forces besieged the city of Mariupol Yulia Beley, who cut off her water and fuel and prevented aid convoys from entering in southern Ukraine, took shelter in a neighbor’s basement with her three daughters and struggled to survive.

Her husband set out to defend the city, so she came out while it was raining bombs to fetch water from a distant well and tried to comfort her children as the bombardment shook the walls and ceiling. Over time, the family’s food dwindled, and Mrs. Beley, the baker, said she gave her hungry children a bowl of porridge a day to share among themselves. 6-year-old daughter Ivanka dreamed of poppy seed sweet rolls that her mother made before the war.

Ms. Beley, 33, said she was still traumatized after fleeing the city a week ago. “I just cried, cried, screamed into the pillow when no one could see.”

Shortly after invading Ukraine, Russia used the old war tactic to besiege Mariupol and starve the once populous city of 430,000 people to attempt to surrender.

From the days when armies besieged medieval castles in Europe Battle of Stalingrad in WWII and put the squeeze Rebel communities in Syria During the 11-year civil war, armies have historically resorted to sieges, ignoring the disastrous effects on the remaining civilians.

This month, Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken accused Russia of “starving” cities in Ukraine. It referred to the memory of Viktor, the brother of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, who died in infancy during the German siege of Leningrad during World War II.

“It’s a shame,” said Mr Blinken. “The world is saying to Russia: ‘Stop these attacks immediately. Leave food and medicine inside. Get the people out safely and end this election war against Ukraine.’”

Siege warfare scholars say the tactic serves different purposes: weakening enemies while avoiding conflicts that could kill the flanking force’s own soldiers, or freezing active fronts during repositioning of attacking forces. But the grueling nature of sieges – and how humans use hunger to turn their own bodies against them – gives them a psychological power unmatched in battle tactics, according to scholars and survivors.

Depriving a residential area of ​​food while shelling serves not only to drive the fighters out, but also to communicate to everyone trapped inside: “You are not an equal person to me. You don’t deserve to eat, drink, take medicine or even breathe!”

The mayor, Vadym Boychenko, said on Ukrainian national television that after besieging Mariupol last month, Russian forces cut off the city from everything it needed to live. Boychenko also destroyed the city’s power stations, cutting off residents’ electricity as temperatures froze, and then the water and gas needed for cooking and heating.

Some civilians managed to escape, making difficult journeys through destroyed streets and Russian checkpoints. But Mr. Boychenko said about 160,000 people are still believed to be trapped inside the city, and more than two dozen buses sent days ago to evacuate them were unable to enter the city due to Russian shelling.

On Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it halted aid operations in Mariupol as the warring parties failed to guarantee the safety of aid workers.

According to the mayor’s estimate, about 5,000 people were killed there, including about 210 children, but the figures could not be verified due to the difficulty of obtaining information.

Russian forces control parts of Mariupol, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a group of independent Russian journalists on Sunday. However, according to Ukraine, the center of the city continues to hold and British military considerations

Pyotr Andryuschenko, an aide to the mayor, told The New York Times that there are an estimated 3,000 Ukrainian fighters from the Azov Battalion. they were defending the city against about 14,000 Moscow-backed soldiers.

When the siege began, Kristina, a Mariupol resident, said she, her husband, and their two children had camped in the entryway of their apartment, which she hoped would provide better shelter and protection than their apartment.

Her husband, a business analyst, went out to find water and cooked over an open fire. They also collected rainwater and snow, boiled the water to sterilize it.

She read fairy tales to distract children, but when they got hungry, Kristina said, “The fire in their eyes is gone,” not wanting to use her full name for fear of revenge. “They weren’t interested in anything.”

“We ate once a day,” he said. “Often in the morning or evening, the children were shouting ‘I want to eat’.”

His family finally fled the city, but he left behind his father and grandparents. The city’s telephone networks are mostly down, making it difficult to track them.

He said they sent a text last week that read, “No roof, no food and no water.”

Doctors who study hunger and hunger describe a gruesome process of mining the body for survival. It burns glucose stored in the liver first, then fat, then muscle.

Dehydration can cause death in less than a week, while a well-fed adult can survive more than 70 days in water alone. Children, the elderly and the sick succumb more quickly.

Other research has shown that hunger not only weakens the body but also disturbs the mind.

Nancy Zucker, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University, said: research has been done They showed that they experienced “significant psychological consequences” on 36 male conscientious objectors who, during World War II, followed a low-calorie diet relative to that given to prisoners of war.

“There were hunger neuroses – increased anxiety, increased isolation, increased depression,” he added.

This damages the compounds in traumatic situations such as wars.

“This is hunger during a disaster,” he said. “It is very difficult to separate the profound psychological consequences of being in a state of war from the consequences of not having enough food.”

The memory of hunger haunted conscientious objectors in the study long after they regained their strength.

“They had to be surrounded by food,” and some became obsessed with it, he said. “A few people went on to become chefs.”

Municipal worker Irina Peredey from Mariupol said she was in shock after escaping and could not eat for days.

After that, he began to eat a full meal every hour.

“An hour passes and you want to eat,” said Ms. Peredey, 29. “It seems psychological to me. You start eating all the time and you want to eat as much as possible.”

“He was confused at first,” he said.

“But now I see that this is how my body is fighting.”

While battling for survival in her basement in Mariupol, baker Ms. Beley said bombs shook the building and bullets were so common that her 3-year-old daughter, Aida, learned to distinguish between incoming and outgoing fire.

The family’s food soon ran out. Another woman gave him a jar of honey.

“This is how we survived,” he said. “We didn’t have food, but we can’t say we didn’t, because a spoonful of honey a day is a kind of lunch anyway.”

When his family finally managed to escape, he felt weak, as if his body was struggling to function. Russian soldiers offered him and his children candy, and he refused at first. Then he changed his mind.

“Give me sugar, sugar,” he said. “I realized that I needed something to protect myself.”

Valerie Hopkins from Lviv, Ukraine, Ben Hubbard from Beirut, Lebanon and Gina Kolata from Princeton, NJ Asmaa al-Omar and Hwaida Saad contributed news from Beirut.