‘The new Auschwitz’: Ukraine accuses Russia of turning Mariupol into a ‘death camp’

One of Ukraine’s largest cities has been transformed into a “death camp”, and Russia is resorting to a grisly tactic to cover up “war crimes”, officials claim.

Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of turning the country’s second-largest city, Mariupol, into a “death camp”, and using a mobile crematorium to cover up their alleged war crimes.

Mariupol has been partially occupied for weeks after enduring relentless bombardment, in one of the most brutal Russian offensives of the invasion.

“The killers are covering their tracks,” Mariupol’s City Council said on social media.

“Russia’s top leadership ordered the destruction of any evidence of crimes committed by its army in Mariupol.”

It said Russian forces had created “special brigades”, staffed by local collaborators and rebels from eastern Ukraine, to carry out the erasure of evidence.

Mariupol officials claimed said erasure was a reaction to the widespread condemnation of Russia’s actions in Bucha, a settlement near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

Ukraine reclaimed Bucha several days ago and discovered horrifying scenes, with hundreds of civilians allegedly executed, raped and in some cases tortured.

Mobile crematoria in #Mariupol

Mayor of Mariupol Vadim Boychenko said today that #Russian mobile crematoria have started operating in the city.

According to him, tens of thousands of people could have died in Mariupol and the cremation, "covering up the traces of crimes". pic.twitter.com/mVj6dC3xK4

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) April 6, 2022

Humanitarian access to Mariupol has been blocked for weeks. An estimated 160,000 residents have been unable to evacuate, and most lack access to electricity, heating, medical care and water, according to intelligence from the UK Ministry of Defence.

Today the city’s Mayor, Vadym Boichenko, said more than 5000 civilians had been killed, including 210 children. He said that, given the scale of destruction, the true death toll could be in the tens of thousands.

Russia agreed to a ceasefire last week after sustained, devastating shelling left much of the city in ruins. But evacuation efforts by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stalled over the weekend due to treacherous conditions.

Overnight, the ICRC said it had been able to evacuate about 500 people from the city of Berdiansk, roughly 80 kilometres south of Mariupol, but was still unable to gain access to those trapped inside the port city.

City officials claimed Russia was barring humanitarian access to Mariupol because of the number of dead Ukrainians who remain on the streets.

The city council further claimed Russian forces were removing potential witnesses to “filtration camps” – an allegation echoed on Tuesday by the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who said she had seen “credible reports” supporting it.

Ms Thomas-Greenfield said Ukrainians in the camps were being stripped of their identification cards and passports, and were also being separated from their families.

A satellite image shows the destruction in Mariupol. Picture: AFP/Maxar Technologies

A pedestrian walks through debris in the street. Picture: Sergey Bobok/AFP

Russian troops sit atop an armoured vehicle in the streets of Mariupol. Picture: Reuters

“The world has not seen the scale of the tragedy in Mariupol since the existence of the Nazi concentration camps,” Mr Boichenko said, according to Ukrainian news outlet Interfax.

“”Russian occupation forces turned our entire city into a death camp. This is the new Auschwitz and Majdanek.

“The world must help punish Putin’s monsters.”

Earlier this week, the Mayor said the situation in his city had “passed beyond the point of a humanitarian disaster”.

“For the last 30 days, these people haven’t had heating, water, anything,” he said.

“The situation for them is not dangerous, it is unlivable. We are trying to co-ordinate with different partners to try to get the entire population out.”

The British government has previously warned that Russia possesses mobile crematoriums, which could follow invading forces and “evaporate” dead soldiers – both Ukrainian soldiers, and its own.

“If I was a soldier and knew that my generals had so little faith in me that they followed me around the battlefield with a mobile crematorium, or I was the mother or father of a son, potentially deployed into a combat zone, and my government thought that the way to cover up losses was a mobile crematorium, I’d be deeply, deeply worried,” UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told the UK’s Telegraph in the early days of the war.

“It’s a very chilling side effect of how the Russians view their forces,” he added.

Mr Wallace said he expected “to see some of the things they’ve done previously”, and that the use of a mobile crematorium “says everything you need to know about the Russian regime”.

This story first appeared on Fox News and has been republished with permission.