Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to garner international condemnation this week, as more evidence of apparent war crimes come to light.
For weeks now, it has been rather apparent that Russia is blatantly targeting civilians in many cities within the sovereign country, and international observers are no longer shy about describing the Kremlin’s war effort as “genocide”.
The latest grisly discovery in the war comes to us from the shellacked city of Mariupol.
Workers digging through the rubble of an apartment building in Mariupol found 200 bodies in the basement, Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday, as more horrors come to light in the ruined city that has seen some of the worst suffering of the 3-month-old war.
The bodies were decomposing and the stench hung over the neighborhood, said Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor. He did not when they were discovered, but the sheer number of victims makes it one of the deadliest known attacks of the war.
Ukrainian leaders were stern in their rebuke.
During the assault on Mariupol, Russian airstrikes hit a maternity hospital and a theater where civilians were taking shelter. An Associated Press investigation found that close to 600 people died in the theater attack, double the figure estimated by Ukrainian authorities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russians of waging “total war” and seeking to inflict as much death and destruction as possible on his country.
“Indeed, there has not been such a war on the European continent for 77 years,” Zelensky said, referring to end of World War II.
Russia is already the focus of several international war crimes investigations, and discoveries like this one certainly could add to the judicial workload.
