Satellite imagery shows a mass grave in Vynohradne, a Russian-occupied village five kilometers to the east of Mariupol, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported today.
The news follows the discovery yesterday of another mass grave close to Mariupol, which was the second-most populous city in the Donetsk region before the Russian invasion.
Satellite images obtained by RFE/RL’s investigations team show trenches approximately 38 meters wide and 4 meters long. According to the team’s analysis, Russian forces seem to have dug those trenches between March 17 and March 29. By April 20, the size of the grave had grown to 45 by 25 meters.
In a post on Telegram, the Mariupol City Council said that the grave is large enough to hold some 1,000 bodies.
Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko told RFE/RL that hundreds of bodies, those of city residents killed by Russian artillery and airstrikes, may be buried at another Vynohradne grave site.
Russian troops occupy swaths of Mariupol, although a contingent of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians remain holed up in a steel plant there.
The siege has created a humanitarian catastrophe in the city. Evacuation efforts have proceeded sporadically. On Thursday, Russian forces shelled humanitarian corridors that civilians had been using to exit the city, the Ukrainian government said.
Ukrainian officials have said that Russia deliberately shells areas under occupation to compel people to flee Ukraine via so-called filtration camps, where they are sorted before they are sent to remote parts of Russia.
Boichenko, in a statement issued on the Mariupol City Council Telegram channel, estimated that some 15,000 people among the elderly and those with chronic disease would die as a result of the siege conditions in his city.
“After all, there is a catastrophic shortage of drinking water, food, and medicine in the blocked city. The occupiers do not care about Mariupol.”
He previously estimated that some 20,000 people had been killed amid the Russian military’s ongoing effort to seize control of the city. Russian forces have reportedly disposed of the bodies of some civilians and of Russian troops using mobile crematoria brought to the city.