Speaking with the regional media Dnipro.tv, Mykola Osychenko, the president of Mariupol TV and civic volunteer, told that according to insider information, Mariupol morgues have documented 87,000 people killed during the Russian siege of the Ukrainian seaside city.
According to him, as of mid-August, the Illichivskyi morgue of Mariupol documented 87,000 dead people. In addition, there a database of unidentified killed people is kept in the Novoazov Prosecutor’s Office and contains 26,750 entries. Bodies of these people are buried and reburied in mass graves.h
He says this number is not final and is prone to rise, as other databases likely exist in other morgues and the exhumation of corpses buried near apartment buildings where they were killed, continues. So does the exhumation of corpses from under rubble.
“If the world community had found the strength and closed the sky over [Ukraine] at the beginning of March, nothing would have happened… If the sky was closed, over 100,000 of those killed in Mariupol would be alive,” he said.
Battles for Mariupol started on 24 February and continued to 20 May, when the last Ukrainian defenders of the city surrendered to Russia. Most of the besieged city was destroyed by Russian invading forces.
