Russian invaders in Mariupol won’t allow proper burials for bodies of fallen Ukrainian soldiers in city
The city of Mariupol under Russian occupation, September 24 (Photo:REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko)
Russian invasion forces in Mariupol are preventing the relatives of dead Ukrainian soldiers from retrieving bodies for burial that are still lying in the streets, Petro Andryushchenko, adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said in a comment to Ukraine’s Suspilne news outlet on Oct. 19.
“In fact, these are the only bodies of the dead in the city that still remain on the streets, although mostly in the dead neighborhoods of the city,” Andryushchenko said.
“However, even the relatives of the deceased who came to Mariupol were not given permission to bury them. The occupiers openly say that this is ‘for edification and fear’. March, April, and May were the months of death. You can only imagine what has happened with the bodies of our Heroes.”
Andryushchenko said the relatives of five soldiers killed in action who went to the occupied city to arrange burials had been prevented from retrieving their bodies by the invaders.
“In the city council, we tried to arrange it remotely: we found people and figured out how to pass money over, but nothing worked,” he said.
There are about 20 of such dead, according to Andryushchenko. Most of the bodies of the fallen defenders of Mariupol remain under rubble in the Livoberezhnyy district near Azovstal and Veselka Park.
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