Detection of satellite images of Mariupol

For more than 80 days, Mariupol has been subjected to relentless bombardment.

Thousands of Ukrainians have been killed and tens of thousands displaced. Maternity wards full of expectant mothers, steelworks kept by soldiers and magnificent theaters filled with hundreds of refugees, flattened by seemingly endless Russian bombing.

New satellite imagery from Google Maps shows how months of warfare have reduced the once gorgeous port city to ruins.

Almost half a million people live there. Now there are almost no houses left. The terrorist state has done all they can to kill this city. More than 90 percent of Mariupol has been destroyed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Facebook on Saturday.

But while entire blocks were flattened, Mariupol’s cemeteries grew larger.

The former advisor to the town’s mayor suspects that Russian soldiers may be buried.

Growth: This satellite image, taken on November 30 last year, shows a significant expansion of Starokrymske Cemetery, one of Mariupol’s largest cemeteries. Image: Satellite Image/Maxar Technologies.

Grow: This satellite image is from March 29 of last year. It is evident here that the cemetery has greatly expanded since then. Image: Satellite Image/Maxar Technologies.

More will be discovered

Petro Andryushenko, an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol in exile, speculates that the new Google satellite images are a mixture of different images, taken sometime between March 16 and the end of April last year.

– We prepared a detailed map of all cemeteries and found new sections of mass graves at the Novotroitsky Cemetery. The sectors are visually larger than the mass graves in Vynohradne or Manhush, he writes cable.

This discovery is amazing, but unfortunately not surprising, according to Russian expert Yakub Gudzimirsky.

– Mariupol was badly damaged by the invasion, fierce fighting took place for several months and there was great destruction. There have been many estimates of the death toll, but if you look at pictures from the city, it is clear that there were many more people who lost their lives.

It is believed that more of these burial grounds and graves will be uncovered, with new photos and documents emerging from Ukraine’s war zones.

– One should expect to discover more atrocities in the future. The mass graves found after the capture of Bucha, Irpin and other places around Kiev, among others, are evidence of this.

He could be Russian

Andryushenko wrote that Russian forces took control of Starokrymske Cemetery during this period.

– All this time the cemetery on the West Bank was under Russian control. During this period, the Ukrainian authorities could not organize funerals here, and the Russians have not yet done so. no excavations. There is no mass of dead bodies on the streets, Andryushenko wrote in a post on cable.

He writes that the Novotroitsky cemetery was also formerly under Russian control and closed to Ukrainians “for a very long time, almost until mid-July”.

Andryushenko claims that the development of the cemetery may be for the burial of fallen Russian soldiers.

– Therefore, one of the plausible hypotheses is that this burial is the burial ground of the Russians killed during the storming of Mariupol.

Information war

Jakob Gudzimirsky believes that Russia will do everything possible to hide as many dead soldiers as possible under the rug.

– We must remember that there is also an information war going on, so we must expect that the Russian authorities will do their best to present the death toll as less than it really is. This applies to both Ukrainian civilians and their soldiers.

He says that the Russian authorities have taken several measures to prevent the spread of information about the number of dead Russian soldiers.

– Some time ago, several Russian media wrote that now there is a ban on publishing information about funerals and dead soldiers in local newspapers, because they are used by Western media and intelligence services to determine the number of dead Russian soldiers.