Thousands of people, mostly civilians, were killed in the bombings. On March 9, Russian warplanes bombed a maternity hospital in the city, and this week an AP investigation said 600 people, mostly women and children seeking shelter in a Soviet-built theater, died when it was bombed by Russian warplanes in March. 16
According to previous estimates, 300 people were killed in the attack on the theater in Mariupol.
Civilians sent to “filtration camps”
Mariupol has become an uninhabitable shell of its former self, and hundreds of thousands have fled. International humanitarian groups have said they are still trying to negotiate a safe passage from the steel plant for the remaining 200 civilians caught there.
Various reports say Russian authorities are sending thousands of people to Russia from Mariupol for resettlement, some in the Far East to the isolated Pacific.
Pro-Ukrainian channel Telegram aired footage of what it said was a “filtration camp” on the outskirts of the city, claiming that refugees awaiting treatment were forced to sleep on tables and chairs in the corridors.
Ukrainian authorities say the makeshift camp is a school in the village of Bezimen, east of Mariupol, where the men were taken. They claim that the men were deprived of their documents and given “filtering” documents.
Describing the sanitary conditions, the narrator in the video says: “The toilet, where you can’t enter because your eyes hurt there, is outside.”
Russian authorities have tried to quell rumors that Putin will declare war on May 9 and order a full-scale mobilization. That would mean rejecting the “special operations” terminology the Kremlin has used since the invasion.
Western intelligence minister Ben Wallace warned on April 29 that the Kremlin was preparing to declare full-scale war and mobilization.
Add Comment