Ukraine officials claim that satellite images (not the one above) show another mass grave just 12 miles outside the port city of Mariupol.
A Telegram post from the Mariupol City Council suggests the alleged mass grave could hold up to 9,000 bodies and be 20 times larger than the one discovered in Bucha, NPR reported.
“The occupiers dug new trenches and filled them with corpses every day throughout April,” the post said, according to a translation. “Our sources report that in such graves the bodies are placed in several layers.”
The post also indicated the potential mass grave could hold between 3,000 and 9,000 bodies, and that the discovery was made by comparing satellite photos of a known burial site in Bucha, “where 70 people were found.” Ukraine officials used Maxar Technologies, which provides satellite images, to make the comparison, saying that images from April 9 indicate the area in Mangush, just outside Mariupol, could hold a mass grave 20 times larger than the one found in Bucha.
“The biggest war crime of the 21st century was committed in Mariupol. This is the new Babyn Yar. Hitler then killed Jews, Roma and Slavs. And now Putin is destroying Ukrainians. He has already killed tens of thousands of civilians in Mariupol. And this requires a strong reaction from the entire civilized world. Anything needs to stop the genocide,” Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said in the Telegram post.
Finally, the post indicated that “public utilities had buried about 5,000 people in various parts of Mariupol and the suburbs,” and that according to “cautious estimates,” the Russian army has killed about 22,000 people in the city.
The news comes just days after Ukrainian military commander Serhiy Volyna shared an open letter asking Western nations for help defending Mariupol and declaring that Ukraine’s forces would “fight until the last drop of blood.”
“Mariupol can be saved. We are ready to fight to the last drop of blood. But we must know that the world has done everything possible for this. Then we are ready to do even the impossible for our country,” Volyna wrote, The Daily Wire reported.
In late March, Mariupol Mayor Boychenko called for the city to completely evacuate. At that time, it was reported that 5,000 people in Mariupol had died in attacks by Russian armed forces.
“About 140,000 people had fled the city on the Sea of Azov before the Russian siege began and 150,000 have exited since then, leaving 170,000 still there, according to the data,” Sky News reported at the time.
Boychenko said then that around 160,000 residents were still trapped in the city.
“People are beyond the line of humanitarian catastrophe,” he said, according to Reuters. “We need to completely evacuate Mariupol.”
“The Russian Federation is playing with us. We are in the hands of the invaders,” he added.
CNN later reported that the mayor called the whole situation a “cynical game.”
“And this game is played every day. A cynical game like, ‘Yes, we are ready. You can drive there,’ but in fact it does not work,” he said. “Our heroic drivers under the fire are trying to reach the places where Mariupol residents can be picked up, and they are waiting with the hope that they will have such an opportunity. But the Russian Federation has been playing with us since day one.”