The 9,000 dead that would lie in mass graves in Mariupol, which were denounced by Vadym Boychenko, mayor of that Ukrainian city, is one more piece of evidence with which Ukraine seeks to show the world that Russia has indeed committed crimes against humanity by attacking the population. civilian or unarmed.
Boychennko went further and said that clandestinely burying Ukrainians who have fallen under Russian bombing by the military of that country is just a way to hide the war crimes committed by Russian soldiers.
“Unfortunately, we have seen that the bodies of dead Mariupol residents have started to disappear from the streets of our city,” Boychenko said.
The local president also indicated that the location of the mass graves is outside a road with circulation, next to a cemetery. Until there, says the mayor, the Russian trucks arrive with the dead and are deposited in mass graves that measure 30 meters long.
“And there they bury them, they bring the bodies of the dead in trucks and throw them into these ditches,” said the mayor.
The complaints made by the Mariupol president are supported by several satellite photographs presented by the Maxar Technologies company showing what appear to be 200 new graves in a town called Manhush, 19 kilometers from Mariupol.
“In the photos (taken) by Maxar on April 9, the sector of the mass grave in Mangush (in the Mariupol area) is 20 times larger. New trenches were dug and filled with corpses daily throughout the month of April. Our sources report that in such graves the bodies are placed in several layers,” Boychenko said.
In the reports delivered by Maxar, the follow-up to the confrontation on the ground between March and April is recorded and shows that the mass grave began between March 23 and 26 and continued throughout the month of April.
“According to recent media reports, Russian soldiers have been bringing the bodies of people killed in Mariupol to this location,” Maxar said in his analysis.
“Yes there are war crimes”
In the inventory of Russia’s violent actions on Ukraine, the UN has registered the bombings and attacks on the civilian population.
For this reason, Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, pointed out that the Russian army has committed actions that could well be classified as crimes against humanity.
“The Russian armed forces indiscriminately shelled populated areas, killing civilians and destroying hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure,” Shamdasani said.
The UN spokeswoman explained that they sent their investigators to the field and within their individual reports they presented that in Ukraine there were summary or extrajudicial executions at the beginning of April. In Shamdasani’s words, “the murders, some of them by summary executions”, of 50 civilians in Bucha, on the outskirts of kyiv.
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The other drama that has spilled over into Ukraine is forced displacement. Data collected by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), dictate that a percentage equivalent to a sixth of its population has been displaced in Ukraine. “An exodus of these dimensions has not been experienced in Europe since the end of World War II,” reported Acnur.
According to the IOM, internal displacement has risen to 7.7 million, and of these, 60% are women and more than half “have problems finding food.” On the other hand, Acnur has reported that exiles already exceed 5.08.
With this panorama, the president of the United States insisted again that the crimes committed by Russia cannot be called anything other than genocide, while Russia denies having exceeded the limits allowed in a confrontation like the one it assumed against Ukraine.
