As many as 9,000 Ukrainian civilians were buried just 12 miles west of Mariupol, along the northwestern edge of Manhush, the Satellite images released Thursday showed what appeared to be a mass grave, according to reports, local officials accused Russia of burying up to 9,000 Ukrainian civilians there in an effort to conceal the slaughter taking place in the siege of the port city.
The city’s mayor Vadym Boychenko has said, “The greatest war crime of the 21st Century has been committed in Mariupol. This is the new Babi Yar.”
He was referring to the site of multiple Nazi massacres in which nearly 34,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed in 1941:
“Then Hitler killed Jews, Roma, and Slavs. And now Putin is destroying Ukrainians. He has already killed tens of thousands of civilians in Mariupol. This requires a strong reaction from the entire world. We need to stop the genocide by any means possible.”
Maxar Technologies, a satellite image company, revealed photographs showing more than 200 mass graves in a town where Ukrainian officials claim Russians have been burying Mariupol civilians slain in the conflict. Long rows of tombs stretched away from an existing cemetery in the hamlet of Manhush, just outside Mariupol, according to the images.
Maxar said a review of previous images indicates that the graves in Manhush were dug in late March and expanded over the past couple of weeks.
“The occupiers dug new trenches and filled them with corpses every day throughout April, Our sources report that in such graves the bodies are placed in several layers.”
Boychenko claimed the Russians excavated massive trenches near Manhush, 20 kilometers west of Mariupol, and were “hiding their war crimes” by depositing dead there in a separate statement.
The graves could hold as many as 9,000 dead, the Mariupol City Council said Thursday in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
The report said:
The images emerged hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory in the battle for the Mariupol, despite the presence of an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters who were still holed up at a giant steel mill. Putin ordered his troops not to storm the stronghold but to seal it off “so that not even a fly comes through.”
“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 civilized world. Anything needs to stop the genocide.”
The Kremlin remained silent for the time being. After mass graves and hundreds of dead civilians were discovered after Russian troops retreated in Bucha and other towns around Kyiv, Russian officials denied that their soldiers had killed any civilians and accused Ukraine of staging the atrocities.
“The bodies of the dead were being brought by the truckload and actually simply being dumped in mounds,” an aide to Boychenko, Piotr Andryushchenko, said on Telegram.