Vadym Boichenko, mayor of Mariupol.Photo: Christopher Occhicone/Bloomberg via Getty
Vadym Boychenkotold the Associated Presson Monday that more than 10,000 civilians have been killed and the death toll could double to 20,000.
Controlling Mariupol, just 35 miles from the border, is a key part of Russia’s strategy.
As a result, its residents have been left without vital infrastructure and faced some of the mosthorrific attacksof the war — including the destruction of a theater where residents were sheltering inside and the bombing of a children’s hospital where dozens wereburned to death.
(Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilian sites, despite these accounts, and has claimed some of them were faked.)
Mayor Boychenko — who said a week ago that most of Mariupol was without power, heat, water and other necessities — accused Russia of blocking humanitarian convoys for weeks, preventing supplies from flowing in and evacuees to move out, in order to conceal the catastrophe unfolding in his city, the AP reports.
The U.S.says the Russian military allegedly committed war crimesin Ukraine and has made promises to investigate.
The invading troops, he said, were storing bodies in facilities and refrigerators at a shopping center before they are incinerated with mobile cremation equipment.
“Mobile crematoriums have arrived in the form of trucks,” Boychenko told the AP. “You open it, and there is a pipe inside and these bodies are burned.”
Russia’sattack on Ukrainecontinues after their forces launched a large-scale invasion on Feb. 24 — the first major land conflict in Europe in decades.
More than 4.5 million have fled the country as refugees — and half are children,according to the United Nations. Millions more have been displaced inside Ukraine.
Mstyslav Chernov/AP
With NATO forces amassed in the region, various countries are offering aid or military support to the resistance. Ukraine’s PresidentVolodymyr Zelenskyyhas called for peace talks — so far unsuccessful — while urging his country to fight back.
Putin insists Ukraine has historic ties to Russia and he is acting in the best security interests of his country. Zelenskyy vowed not to bend.
“Nobody is going to break us, we’re strong, we’re Ukrainians,“he told the European Unionin a speech in the early days of the fighting, adding, “Life will win over death. And light will win over darkness.”
source: people.com
