Burying 9,000 civilians in mass grave near Mariupol, Ukraine accuses Russia

The mayor of the besieged port city of Mariupol said Russian troops have buried as many as 9,000 civilians killed in the conflict in a nearby mass grave in order to cover up “military crimes.”

“The greatest war crime of the 21st century has been committed in Mariupol. This is the new Babi Yar,” Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said, referring to the site of multiple Nazi massacres in which nearly 34,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed in 1941.

Boychenko and the city council in Mariupol accused Russians of burying civilians killed in Manhush, about 12 miles west of Mariupol, in large trenches they had dug. He said “the bodies started disappearing from the streets of the city,” charging that the Russians were “hiding the trace of their crimes and using the mass grave as one of the instruments for that.”

“Then Hitler killed Jews, Roma and Slavs. And now Putin is destroying Ukrainians. He has already killed tens of thousands of civilians in Mariupol,” Boychenko said. “This requires a strong reaction from the entire world. We need to stop the genocide by any means possible.”

Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the mayor who is not currently in the city, posted satellite photos to Telegram claiming to show the growing mass grave, according to CNN. He said the graves appear about 100 feet deep. The accuracy of these claims and images could not be immediately verified.

The jarring claim came the same day Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted victory in the battle for Mariupol, even as hundreds of Ukrainian troops hold out in and around a sprawling steel plant in the city.

President Joe Biden pushed back on Putin's claim, saying there isn't evidence yet of a Russian victory. “It’s questionable whether he does control Mariupol,” Biden said. “There’s no evidence yet that Mariupol has completely fallen.”

 

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