Ukraine Claims Russia Burning Bodies In Mariupol To ‘Hide Evidence Of Mass Killings’

NEW YORK (VINnews) — Ukraine has accused Russia of turning the coastal city of Mariupol into a Nazi-style death camp, burning bodies and blocking humanitarian convoys to hide evidence of mass killings and other atrocities perpetrated there.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko said that more than 5,000 civilians — including at least 210 children — had been killed during weeks of Russian bombardment and street fighting in the southern Ukrainian city, which has been held under a devastating siege. He said Russian forces bombed hospitals, including one where 50 people burned to death. However the mayor hinted that thousands more may have been killed – and the Russians were trying to hide the evidence.

Mariupol city officials said in a message posted to Telegram that mobile crematoria were being operated by Russian officials to burn the bodies of those that had been killed, conjuring up imagery of the 20th century’s greatest crime.

“The world has not seen the scale of the tragedy in Mariupol since the Nazi concentration camps,” Boichenko said in the statement. “The [Russians] have turned our whole city into a death camp.”

“This is no longer Chechnya or Aleppo. This is the new Auschwitz or Majdanek,” he said, imploring the international community to act.

Ukrainian human rights official Lyudmila Denisova also cited witness testimony that Russian forces had brought mobile crematoria and other heavy equipment to clear debris in the city.

A city official said that people trying to flee the city had been sent to a “filtration camp,” CNN reported.

Boichenko claimed that over 90% of the city’s infrastructure has been destroyed. The attacks on the strategic southern city on the Sea of Azov have cut off food, water, fuel and medicine and pulverized homes and businesses.

An estimated 160,000 people are still in Mariupol, down from a pre-war population of over 430,000.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated the claims, stating that Russia was preventing humanitarian access to the besieged port city in order to hide evidence of “thousands” of people killed there.

“The reason why we cannot get into Mariupol with the humanitarian cargo is precisely because they are afraid… that the world will see what is going on there,” Zelensky told Turkey’s Haberturk TV.

“I think it’s a tragedy there, it’s hell, I know that it’s not tens, but thousands of people, different people, who have been killed there and thousands wounded,” Zelensky said.

However, the president expressed confidence that Russia would not succeed in concealing all the evidence.

“They will not be able to hide all of this and bury all of these Ukrainians who died and who are injured. It’s just such a number, it’s thousands of people, it’s impossible to hide.”

Zelensky accused Russia of committing human rights atrocities in other areas, including the liberated city of Bucha:

“They burned families. Families. Yesterday we found again a new family: father, mother, two children. Little, little children, two. One was a little hand, you know,” Zelensky said. “That’s why I said ‘they are Nazis’.”

The besieged city of Mariupol has seen some of the worst fighting of the war and civilians trapped in the city lack the most elementary needs, including food, water and electricity.