Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Workers digging in the rubble of an apartment building in Mariupol found 200 bodies in the basement, Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday as more horrors came to light in the city in ruins that have suffered some of the worst suffering in the city. 3 month war.
The bodies were decaying and the stench hung over the neighborhood, said Petro Andryushchenko, the mayor’s adviser. He did not say when they were discovered, but the large number of casualties makes it one of the deadliest attacks known of the war.
Meanwhile, heavy fighting continued in the Donbas, the eastern industrial region that Moscow forces are determined to seize. Russian troops intensified their efforts to encircle and capture Sievierodonetsk and other cities.
Mariupol was hit non-stop during a nearly three-month siege that ended last week after some 2,500 Ukrainian fighters left a steel plant where they had taken up their position. Russian forces already had the rest of the city, where an estimated 100,000 people remain outside a pre-war population of 450,000, many of them trapped during the siege with little food, water, heat or electricity.
At least 21,000 people were killed during the siege, according to Ukrainian authorities, who have accused Russia of trying to cover up the horrors by introducing mobile cremation equipment and burying the dead in mass graves.
During the assault on Mariupol, Russian airstrikes hit a maternity hospital and a theater where civilians were taking refuge. An investigation by the Associated Press found that about 600 people were killed in the attack on the theater, double the figure estimated by the Ukrainian authorities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russians of waging a “total war” and of trying to inflict as much death and destruction as possible on their country.
“In fact, there has been no such war on the European continent for 77 years,” Zelensky said, referring to the end of World War II.
Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces in the Donbas for eight years and have large tracts of territory. Sievierodonetsk and neighboring cities are the only part of the Luhansk region of the Donbas that is still under the control of the Ukrainian government.
Russian forces have achieved “some localized successes” despite strong resistance from Ukraine over the buried positions, British military officials said.
In the Donetsk region of Donbas, Moscow troops took control of the industrial city of Svitlodarsk and hoisted the Russian flag there, Ukrainian media reported. And there was a fierce battle in the town of Lyman.
Amid clashes, two senior Russian officials appeared to acknowledge that Moscow’s advance was slower than expected, although they promised that the offensive would achieve its goals.
Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council of Russia. he said the Russian government “does not pursue deadlines”. And Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at a meeting of a Russia-led security alliance of the former Soviet states that Moscow is deliberately slowing down its offensive to allow residents of besieged cities to evacuate, though forces have repeatedly hit civilian targets.
Russian officials also announced that Moscow forces had just cleared the mines of Mariupol waters and that a safe corridor would be opened on Wednesday for the departure of up to 70 foreign ships from the southern coast of Ukraine.
In Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, there were signs of recovery after weeks of bombing. Neighbors lined up to receive rations of flour, pasta, sugar and other staples this week. Moscow forces withdrew from the vicinity of Kharkiv earlier this month, retreating to the Russian border in the face of Ukrainian counterattacks.
Galina Kolembed, coordinator of the aid distribution center, said more and more people are returning to the city. Kolembed said the center provides food to more than 1,000 people every day, a figure that continues to grow.
“Many of them have young children and spend their money on children, so they need some support with food,” he said.
Meanwhile, the wife of the commander-in-chief who endured inside the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol said on Tuesday that she had a brief telephone conversation with her husband, who turned himself in to the Russians and was taken prisoner last week. .
Kateryna Prokopenko, who is married to Azov Regiment leader Denys Prokopenko, said the call was interrupted before he could say anything about himself.
He said the call was made possible by an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, mediated by the Red Cross.
Prokopenko and Yuliia Fedosiuk, another soldier’s wife, said several families had received calls in the past two days. The women said they hoped the soldiers would not be tortured and eventually “return home.”
Denis Pushilin, leader of Moscow-backed separatists in the Donetsk region, told Russia’s Interfax news agency that preparations are underway for a trial of captured Ukrainian soldiers, including Mariupol defenders.
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Becatoros reported from Kramatorsk, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Andrea Rosa in Kharkiv, Danica Kirka in London and other AP staff members from around the world contributed.
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