In what has been described as one of the largest battles of the Russia-Ukraine war, at least 8,000 people were killed in Russia’s conquest of Mariupol, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. The siege lasted for nearly three months from March to May 2022, and Mariupol became synonymous with horror as trapped civilians were forced to bury their dead by the roadside.
This estimate by Human Rights Watch, based on satellite and other images of grave sites, is one of the few independent assessments of the death toll. The Ukrainian government has claimed that tens of thousands were killed, but it cannot provide an exact number without access to the city, which is now under Russian control.
The United Nations, which has rights monitors in Ukraine, has documented over 10,000 civilian deaths in the country since Russia’s invasion. However, it has not been able to verify reports of high civilian deaths in Mariupol due to access constraints.
Denying allegations of atrocities and civilian targeting in Ukraine, Russia has vehemently denied committing any such acts. Human Rights Watch suggested that the actual death toll could be much higher than its estimate, with some graves containing multiple bodies and some sites remaining unidentified.
The full report titled ‘Our City Was Gone: Russia’s Devastation of Mariupol, Ukraine’, which was compiled with NGO Truth Hounds and architecture practice SITU, draws on around 240 interviews with mainly displaced Mariupol residents. It documents attacks on civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, a supermarket, and a theater housing civilians, finding no evidence of Ukrainian military presence nearby, making these attacks unlawful.
Ida Sawyer, the crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch, referred to Russian forces’ devastation of Mariupol as one of the worst chapters of their invasion of Ukraine, calling for governments to conduct investigations. The report identifies 10 individuals with “command responsibility” as potential subjects for war crimes investigations.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Thomas Balmforth; Editing by Peter Graff)
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