Ukrainian officials and satellite photographs point to indications of mass graves, outside Mariupol

Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday that satellite photographs acquired and analysed by Maxar Technologies have located the location of apparent mass graves near the beleaguered Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.

Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, wrote, “As a result of a long search and identification of places of mass burial of dead Mariupol residents, we established the fact of arrangement and mass burial of the dead Mariupol residents in the village of Manhush.”

Andriushchenko, who is not in Mariupol but has served as a clearinghouse for information from inside the besieged city, posted the coordinates on Telegram, claiming that Russian forces had dug several mass graves in Manhush, a town about 12 miles west of Mariupol, each measuring about 30 metres.

He said that trucks transport the dead to the embankment, where they are unceremoniously dumped.

This is concrete evidence of war crimes and cover-up attempts.

Russian military, according to recent media reports, have started transporting the bodies of individuals slain in Mariupol to this area.

According to an analysis of satellite photographs from mid-March to mid-April, the new group of graves began to expand between March 23 and March 26, 2022, and has continued to expand over the past few weeks.

The tombs are laid out in four sections in linear rows, and feature about 200 new graves.

More than 20,000 civilians, including, women, children, and the elderly, were killed by enemy artillery and planes on the streets of the city.

This is also supported by the testimony of the heads of municipal agencies who witnessed it.

Unfortunately, we’ve noticed that the bodies of dead Mariupol people have begun to vanish from our city’s streets, Boichenko added.

He said the mass graves were off a bypass road, near a cemetery, and estimated that around 100,000 people remain in Mariupol.