Satellite images analyzed by the BBC show 1,500 more graves dug since June, bringing the total to more than 4,600 since the start of the war in a destroyed city.
Few cities in Ukraine represent the horror of war as well as Mariupol. This strategic enclave on the coast of the Sea of Azov has been a primary target of the Russians from the beginning of the invasion and has been the scene of some of the greatest atrocities committed to date. Some estimates by the Ukrainian authorities put the death toll in this city at 25,000. But the horror could be much greater.
New satellite images analyzed by the British television BBC show that 1,500 graves have been dug in Mariupol since June. In total there are 4,600 graves in the city since the beginning of the war. A gigantic open-air cemetery.
The dripping of morgues has been incessant. The first mass grave in the area was found in April in the town of Mangush, 20 kilometers from Mariupol. It is estimated that there are between 3,000 and 9,000 bodies inside. Later, many other massive graves were found in the municipality and its surroundings. The latest, the 1500 unveiled this Monday.
Of course, Mariúpol has not been the only city where mass graves have been found. It has also happened in Izium or in Bucha, where after their withdrawal the Russians left behind dozens of corpses of executed civilians, images that went around the world.
The photos released by the BBC on Monday show three cemeteries which, according to Ukrainian official sources and witnesses, contain thousands of bodies. Several residents quoted by the television network say in recent months they have watched representatives of the Russian authorities occupying the city pull thousands of bodies from the rubble. According to estimates by the Kiev government, between 5,000 and 7,000 bodies were buried in the ruins of the destroyed city.
Eyewitnesses have told BBC cameras that they have been unable to bury their loved ones in these long months of war. Many don’t even know where they are. They could be in mass graves in the city center after the bodies were removed from the streets during the clashes.
“On some horrific days, we were told that there were over a hundred bodies, sometimes 150 bodies, that needed to be collected,” said Vaagn Mnatsakanian, a resident who took part in local teams digging these graves for municipal authorities. Others have said they visited makeshift morgues in Mariupol in the summer to try to find their loved ones. “People need to know the truth about these horrors so it doesn’t happen again,” said Tatiana, a woman who lives in the city.
Before the war, Mariúpol had a population of about 500,000 people. It was besieged by Russian troops from the first day of the invasion and subjected to constant heavy artillery shelling for weeks.
Mariupol was the first martyr city in Ukraine. The images that arrived in the first bars of the war were of horrific crudeness. There, for example, the bombing took place on a maternity center with dozens of pregnant women in it.
The horrific fighting raged for weeks as Ukrainians in the area sought refuge in the Azovstal steel mill. They resisted until the end of May, led by soldiers from the Azov battalion, which is considered neo-Nazi in Russia. The clashes culminated in a massive prisoner exchange and the final conquest of the municipality by Russia.
The port enclave is of great strategic, symbolic and economic value to Russia. Economically, it would become the main center of heavy industry and shipbuilding in the country, in addition to capturing the largest commercial port in the Sea of Azov of the former republic. From here, grain and heavy machinery were exported to Europe and the Middle East. But in addition, the city has strategic value as the core of the southeastern strip conquered by the Russians and symbolic significance. It opposed its army at the start of the war in Donbas in 2014 and is the headquarters of the Azov battalion, the “Nazis” Putin wants to eliminate. Hell continues.
Source: La Verdad
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