Workers sifting through the wreckage of an apartment building in Mariupol discovered 200 victims in the basement, according to Ukrainian authorities, as fresh atrocities emerge in the shattered city that has experienced some of the worst sufferings in the three-month-long conflict.
According to Petro Andryushchenko, a mayor’s consultant, the bodies rotted and the stink hovered over the area. When they were discovered, he didn’t, but the sheer number of deaths makes it one of the war’s bloodiest strikes.
Meanwhile, a heavy battle raged in the Donbas, the eastern industrial region that Moscow is attempting to seize. Russian forces stepped up their efforts to encircle and capture Sievierodonetsk and its surrounding cities.
Mariupol was battered mercilessly for nearly three months until 2,500 Ukrainian fighters abandoned a steel mill where they had made their stand last Thursday. The rest of the city, where an estimated 100,000 people remain out of a prewar population of 450,000, is already under Russian control. Many of them were imprisoned during the siege with no food, water, heat, or electricity.
According to Ukrainian authorities, at least 21,000 people were killed during the siege, and Russia has been accused of attempting to hide the horrors by bringing in mobile cremation equipment and burying the dead in mass graves.
Russian airstrikes targeted a maternity facility and a theater where civilians were seeking refuge during the attack on Mariupol. According to an investigation by reporters, about 600 people were killed in the theater attack, more than double the number estimated by Ukrainian authorities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of committing “total war” against his country, claiming that the Russians are trying to kill as many people as possible.
“There hasn’t been a conflict on the European continent like this in 77 years,” Zelensky remarked, alluding to the end of WWII.
Separatists backed by Russia have been fighting Ukrainian soldiers in the Donbas for eight years and control huge areas of land. The only area of the Donbas’ Luhansk region remaining under Ukrainian government control is Sievierodonetsk and its surrounding cities.
Despite fierce Ukrainian opposition along with dug-in positions, Russian soldiers have secured “some limited gains,” according to British military authorities.
According to Ukrainian media, Moscow’s troops also took control of Svitlodarsk and flew the Russian flag there. Svitlodarsk is located 50 kilometers (31 miles) southeast of Kramatorsk, a strategically important city.
Two senior Russian officials appeared to admit that Moscow’s progress has been slower than predicted, but they insisted that the offensive would succeed.
The Russian government, according to Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, “is not chasing deadlines.” In addition, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told a summit of a Russia-led security alliance of former Soviet states that Moscow is purposefully slowing down its offensive to allow people of besieged cities to flee – despite the fact that forces have frequently hit civilian targets.
Residents in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city formed enormous lines this week to get rations of flour, pasta, sugar, and other basics as the city recovers from weeks of continuous bombing. Moscow’s forces pulled back toward the Russian border from around Kharkiv early this month.
Galina Kolembed, the coordinator of the aid distribution center, claimed that more people are returning to the city. According to Kolembed, the center feeds around 1,000 individuals every day, and the number is growing. “Many of them have tiny children, and they spend their money on them, therefore they require food assistance,” she explained.
