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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Dozens of Ukrainians and their supporters gathered in downtown Miami Saturday to demonstrate against the Russian invasion of their country and to ask the US for help.
On Saturday, the rally was held at Bayfront Park.
The demonstrators were holding signs, carrying Ukrainian flags as they chanted against the war.
Local elected officials were also at the rally, including Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Russian forces had intensified their shelling in the port city of Mariupol.
“The city is in a very, very difficult state of siege,” Vadym Boychenko, mayor of the city of Mariupol in Donetsk, told Ukrainian TV. “Relentless shelling of residential blocks is ongoing, airplanes have been dropping bombs on residential areas.”
Boychenko said that thousands of children, women and the elderly came under fire as they arrived in the morning for a possible evacuation through a safe passage corridor. Russia promised to stop the shelling of Mariupol, a port city of 430,000, and Volnovakha, a city in the east, but violated the cease-fire.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyyhas made a “desperate” plea to American lawmakers for the US to help get more warplanes to his military and cut off Russian oil imports as Kyiv tries to stave off the Russian invasion.
Zelenskyy spoke with some 300 members of Congress and their staffs in an hour-long private video call on Saturday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said afterward that Zelenskyy wants the U.S. to facilitate the transfer of planes from Eastern European allies so Ukraine’s military can protect its skies from Russian attack.
Since the start of the invasion, 1.45 million people have fled the battered country, according to the U.N.-affiliated Organization for Migration in Geneva.
The United Nations has predicted that the total number of refugees could swell to 4 million, to become the biggest such crisis this century.
The U.N. Security Council will hold a meeting Monday afternoon on the escalating humanitarian needs that have arisen since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
(© Copyright 2022 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)