Berlin In the Ukraine war there are always new indications of targeted attacks by the Russian military on the Ukrainian civilian population. The United Nations (UN) Commissioner for Human Rights announced on Friday that it now has indications of the – literally – unlawful killing of 50 civilians in the Kiev suburb of Bucha, which the Russian army occupied for weeks.
The human rights organization Human Rights Watch previously said it had found extensive evidence of executions and torture by the Russian army in the city of Bucha.
Satellite images were also published on Friday, which are said to show mass graves not far from Manhush. The small town is near the city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea, which has been surrounded by Russian units for weeks.
Up to 9,000 killed civilians are said to have been buried in the mass grave several hundred meters long along an arterial road. “The occupiers dug new trenches every day throughout April and filled them with corpses. Our sources report that bodies in such graves are laid in several layers,” wrote the elected Ukrainian city councilors of Mariupol on their Telegram channel.
This satellite photo provided by Maxar Technologies is said to show a mass grave in Manhush near a cemetery parallel to the road.
(Photo: dpa)
The photos come from the US company Maxar Technologies, which used satellite photos to document in detail the Russian army’s deployment on the border with Ukraine from last October. On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin finally ordered his troops to invade the neighboring country.
Request for help identifying the dead
“The greatest war crime of the 21st century is being committed in Mariupol. This is the new Babyn Yar,” says Vadim Boichenko. The mayor of Mariupol is thus commemorating a massacre on September 29 and 30, 1941. At that time, German National Socialists and their helpers shot more than 33,000 Jews in what is now the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
According to the Ukrainian regional administration, at least 22,000 civilians have been killed in Mariupol since the beginning of the war – partly through targeted rocket attacks on children’s hospitals, the city theater and other civilian facilities such as water and electricity supply. 13 mobile crematoria are in use to cover up the number of dead.
Torture, rape and kidnapping are the order of the day
“It breaks your heart when you see and hear that,” says Ukrainian MP Maria Ionova. She is visiting Berlin on Friday. She regularly receives reports about kidnapped children and now more and more often about girls and boys being systematically raped by Russian soldiers or fighters from the Russian Caucasus Republic of Chechnya. This is reported by the representative of the opposition party “European Solidarity” of ex-President Petro Poroshenko.
MP Ionowa addressed an appeal for help to Germany: “The greatest humanitarian aid is arms deliveries. Because that is the only way we can end this humanitarian catastrophe.”
Olena Chomenko, deputy of the party of the incumbent head of state Volodymyr Zelenskiy “Servant of the People”, is with Ionova in Berlin. She says: “This is no longer a war, but targeted genocide against Ukraine”.
Chomenko is asking the federal government and other German authorities for help in solving these crimes. Funds for DNA testing are urgently needed to identify the dead.
In addition, help is needed to clear the villages that were deliberately littered with booby traps by Russian soldiers when they left. Explosives were even planted in corpses to kill undertakers, family members or investigators.
There are reports of kidnapped children and, more and more often, of systematic rapes even of girls and boys by Russian soldiers.
(Photo: AP)
Husein Abdullayev reported on his experiences to the Internet portal Media.az. The student, who fled the besieged Mariupol, says he was captured by Russian soldiers when he tried to escape on March 17.
Azerbaijani-born Abdullayev, a third-year student at Ukraine University in Mariupol, said he was stopped at a roadblock near Berdyansk and stripped down to his underwear. He was searched for suspicious tattoos.
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He was repeatedly tortured into confessing to being a member of the nationalist Azov battalion fighting in Mariupol. “I was tortured every day. All day long on my birthday. Otherwise usually with electric shocks for 20 to 30 minutes and then brutally beaten for an hour. The torture was repeated three times a day. There were times when I fainted, they poured cold water on me and continued to torture me,” Abdullayev, who has since been released, told the Internet portal.
In Melitopol, the Russians are trying to force people to their side through starvation, humanitarian aid has been stopped.
(Photo: dpa)
Mayor Ivan Fedorov, who was abducted immediately after the city of Melitopol was taken and, according to his own account, tortured for days with kicks and punches, reported that around 50 Ukrainian mayors or their deputies had been kidnapped by Russian forces in the meantime. Fedorov was released in a prisoner exchange in March.
In his city, 150 kilometers west of Mariupol, the Russians are trying to force people to their side through hunger: “The Russians have now stopped all humanitarian aid, they are completely blocking our city, and we cannot send any humanitarian aid.” Melitopol is already controlled by Russia since the end of February.
Human Rights Commissioner of Ukraine Ludmila Denizova stressed that the mistreatment of civilians in the Russian-occupied territories is commonplace. They constituted a war crime and a violation of the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilians in Time of War.
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