ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — New satellite images show what appear to be mass graves near Mariupol, with local authorities accusing Russia of burying up to 9,000 Ukrainian civilians there in an effort to hide the massacre that took place during the siege of the port city.
The images emerged on Thursday, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory in the Battle of Mariupol, despite the presence of some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters still holed up in a giant steel plant. Putin ordered his troops to seal off the fortress “so that not even a fly passes” instead of storming it.
Satellite imagery provider Maxar Technologies published the photos, which it said showed more than 200 mass graves in a town where Ukrainian authorities say the Russians have been burying Mariupol residents killed in the fighting. The images showed long rows of graves stretching from an existing cemetery in the town of Manhush, outside Mariupol.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko accused the Russians of “concealing their military crimes” by removing the bodies of civilians from the city and burying them in Manhush.
The graves could contain up to 9,000 dead, the Mariupol City Council said in a post on the Telegram messaging app on Thursday.
Boychenko called the Russian actions in the city “the new Babi Yar,” a reference to the site of multiple Nazi massacres in which nearly 34,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed in 1941.
“The bodies of the dead were brought in by trucks and, in fact, were simply dumped on mounds,” a Boychenko aide, Piotr Andryushchenko, told Telegram.
There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin. When mass graves and hundreds of dead civilians were discovered in Bucha and other towns around kyiv after Russian troops withdrew three weeks ago, Russian officials denied their soldiers killed civilians there and accused Ukraine of orchestrating the atrocities.
In a statement, Maxar said a review of earlier images indicates the graves at Manhush were excavated in late March and enlarged in recent weeks.
After nearly two deadly months of shelling that largely reduced Mariupol to a smoldering ruinRussian forces appear to control the rest of the strategic southern city, including its vital but now severely damaged port.
But a few thousand Ukrainian soldiers, according to Moscow estimates, have stubbornly held out for weeks at the steel plant. despite blows from Russian forces and repeated demands for his surrender. Some 1,000 civilians were also trapped there, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Russia of launching attacks to block civilian evacuations from Mariupol.
At least two Russian strikes on Thursday hit the city of Zaporizhzhia, a way station for people fleeing Mariupol. No one was injured, the regional governor said.
Among those who arrived in Zaporizhzhya after fleeing the city were Yuriy and Polina Lulac, who spent almost two months living in a basement with at least a dozen other people. There was no running water and little food, Yuriy Lulac said.
“What was happening there was so horrible that it cannot be described,” said the native Russian speaker, who used a derogatory word for Russian troops, saying they were “killing people for nothing.”
“Mariupol is gone. In the courtyards there are only tombs and crosses,” said Lulac.
The Red Cross said it expected to evacuate 1,500 people by bus, but the Russians only allowed a few dozen to leave and removed some people from the buses.
Dmitriy Antipenko said that he lived most of the time in a basement with his wife and father-in-law in the midst of death and destruction.
“In the yard there was a small cemetery and we buried seven people there,” Antipenko said, wiping away tears.
Rather than send troops to finish off Mariupol’s defenders inside the steelworks in a potentially bloody frontal assault, Russia apparently intends to hold the siege and wait for the fighters to surrender when they run out of food or ammunition.
In total, more than 100,000 people were believed to be trapped with little or no food, water, heating or medicine in Mariupol, which had a pre-war population of about 430,000 people. More than 20,000 people have died in the siege, according to Ukrainian authorities.
The city has captured global attention as the scene of some of the war’s worst suffering, including deadly airstrikes on a maternity hospital and a theater.
Boychenko rejected any idea that Mariupol had fallen into Russian hands.
“The city was, is and remains Ukrainian,” he declared. “Today our brave warriors, our heroes, are defending our city.”
The capture of Mariupol would represent the Kremlin’s biggest victory so far in the Ukraine war. It would help Moscow secure more of the coastline, complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014, and free up more forces to join the bigger and potentially more important battle now underway. march through the industrial heart of eastern Ukraine, Donbas.
In a joint appearance with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Putin declared, “Completion of combat work to liberate Mariupol is a success,” and congratulated Shoigu.
Shoigu predicted that the Azovstal steelworks could be taken over in three to four days. But Putin said that would be “useless” and expressed concern for the lives of Russian troops by deciding not to send them to clean up the sprawling plant, where staunch defenders were hiding in a maze of underground passageways.
Instead, the Russian leader said, the military should “lock off this industrial area so that not even a fly gets through.”
The plant covers 11 square kilometers (4 square miles) and is crisscrossed by some 24 kilometers (15 miles) of tunnels and bunkers.
“The Russian agenda now is not to capture these really tough places where the Ukrainians can hold out in the urban centers, but to try to capture territory and also surround the Ukrainian forces and declare a major victory,” said retired British Rear Admiral Chris. Perry said.
Russian officials have said for weeks that capturing the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas is the main goal of the war. Moscow forces opened the new phase of fighting this week along a 480-kilometre (300-mile) front from the northeastern city of Kharkiv to the Sea of Azov.
While Russia continued with heavy air and artillery strikes in those areas, it did not appear to gain significant ground in recent days, according to military analysts, who said Moscow forces were still stepping up the offensive.
A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s assessment, said the Ukrainians were hampering the Russian effort to push south from Izyum.
Rockets slammed into a Kharkiv neighborhood on Thursday, burning at least two civilians to death in their car. A school and a residential building were also affected, with firefighters attempting to put out a fire and search for anyone trapped.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Russian troops kidnapped a local official leading a humanitarian convoy in the southern Kherson region. She said the Russians offered to release him in exchange for Russian prisoners of war, but she characterized this as unacceptable.
Vereshchuk also said that efforts to establish three humanitarian corridors in the Kherson region failed on Thursday because Russian troops failed to stop their fire.
In the US, President Joe Biden pledged an additional $1.3 billion for new weapons and economic assistance to help Ukraine, and promised to ask Congress much more to keep weapons, ammunition and cash flowing.
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Associated Press journalists Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine; Danica Kirka in London; and Robert Burns and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report, as did other AP staff members around the world.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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