google maps updated on Thursday the satellite images of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol revealing the brutal siege after a year of bloody fighting in the Donbasregion taken over by the troops and mercenaries of Vladimir Putin in May of last year.
The panorama is devastating: destroyed buildings, razed squares, desolate streets and countless houses reduced to rubble by the warlike actions of the Kremlin.
In the new images provided by Google you can see the destruction of the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theater, which served as air-raid shelter and where about 600 people died following a deliberate attack by Russian forces. Its green areas were also burned by the simultaneous detonation of two 500-kilogram bombs. For International Amnesty, this irrational act ordered by Putin is a clear example of a war crime.
“After months of rigorous investigation, analysis of satellite images, and interviews with dozens of witnesses, we came to the conclusion that the attack was a clear war crime committed by Russian forces. Many people were injured or lost their lives in this ruthless attack,” said the organization’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard, at the time.
The destruction also covers one of the most important shopping centers in the city: the portcity shopping mall, where through the new satellite images the damage to its infrastructure can be seen, especially on the roof, the product of the impact of missiles and artillery from the Kremlin. The Google Maps update also accounts for the desolation in the area, of destroyed power lines and charred fields.
According to a complaint from the adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andryushchenko, The images date from the month of March and prove that the Russian forces also used several areas of the city as places for mass burials (common graves), according to statements collected by the outlet. Kyiv Post.
To these new photographs of the technology giant are added those already released by the American company Maxar Technologies that showed for the month of April last year some 200 new graves in the northwest of the city of Manhush, 19 kilometers from Mariupol. According to complaints from the Ukrainian authorities, the Russians sought to eliminate their savage mortality from the streets of the city by building new mass graves.
For the month of May of last year, the mayor of Mariupol, Vadim Boichenko, indicated that “we estimate the death toll at 22,000. But more and more facts show that the consequences of racist crime are much worse. This requires special attention from the international community, as well as the terrible situation of the local population during the occupation.”
The brutality of the Russian bombings in Mariupol also hit hospitals and schools and violated an agreement between the parties to establish humanitarian corridors to evacuate more than 350,000 civilians, according to United Nations figures, despite Russian attempts to make them believe that such attacks were not the product of his actions.
“The horrors inflicted on the civilian population will leave their indelible mark, even on generations to come”affirmed Michel Bachelet, who at that time was the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
“Parents who had to bury their own children, people who witnessed the suicide of their friends, families torn apart, all those who had to leave a much-loved city with uncertain prospects of ever seeing it again,” he said.
After the Russians took the city by force, Mariupol became the epicenter of torture, rape, kidnapping and deportation of Ukrainian children. Actions that granted the Russian president a fast pass to be investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued an arrest warrant against him for the continuous harassment and violations of international humanitarian law.
for the court of Hague there are “reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect is responsible for the war crime of illegal deportation of population and illegal transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federationto the detriment of Ukrainian children”.
This decision prohibits Putin from traveling to more than 120 countries and if he dares to do so, he must be immediately detained.
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, He warned that “those who believe it is impossible for Putin to be arrested for acts committed in Ukraine do not understand history.”
But Putin does not care about the sanctions or warnings that may exist against him, as is customary in this type of authoritarian regimes, and in a clear gesture of provocation, he visited Mariupol after the action taken by the ICC. The Russian propaganda media made the world believe an apparent normality, showing the Russian president walking the destroyed streets and supervising supposed reconstruction works of the city.
The reactions to this visit did not wait.
“Befitting a thief, Putin visited the Ukrainian city of Mariupol undercover at night. Because the darkness also hides the reality of a city completely destroyed and without prying eyes of its few survivors, “said the Ministry of Defense.
According to calculations by the Ukrainian authorities, some 100,000 civilians remain trapped in Mariupol subjected to a humanitarian crisis unprecedented: no food, no water, no medicine.
However, there are a significant number of Ukrainian militants entrenched in the Azovstal steel plant who say they will not surrender to Russia’s atrocities and will fight tirelessly to retake the city.
According to the Zelensky government, the evacuation campaigns promoted by both the UN and the Red Cross have allowed the eviction of some 500 people in recent weeks.
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