Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka and Lori Hinnant
Associated Press, March 16, 2022
MARIUPOL, Ukraine — The bodies of the children all lie here, dumped into this narrow trench hastily dug into the frozen earth of Mariupol to the constant drumbeat of shelling.
There's 18-month-old Kirill, whose shrapnel wound to the head proved too much for his little toddler's body. There's 16-year-old Iliya, whose legs were blown up in an explosion during a soccer game at a school field. There's the girl no older than 6 who wore the pajamas with cartoon unicorns, among the first of Mariupol's children to die from a Russian shell.
They are stacked together with dozens of others in this mass grave on the outskirts of the city. . . . Workers toss the bodies in as fast as they can, because the less time they spend in the open, the better their own chances of survival. . . .
More bodies will come, from streets where they are everywhere and from the hospital basement where adults and children are laid out awaiting someone to pick them up. The youngest still has an umbilical stump attached.
Each airstrike and shell that relentlessly pounds Mariupol — about one a minute at times — drives home the curse of a geography that has put the city squarely in the path of Russia's domination of Ukraine. This southern seaport of 430,000 has become a symbol of Russian President Vladimir Putin's drive to crush democratic Ukraine — but also of a fierce resistance on the ground.
In the nearly three weeks since Russia's war began, two Associated Press journalists have been the only international media present in Mariupol, chronicling its fall into chaos and despair. The city is now encircled by Russian soldiers, who are slowly squeezing the life out of it, one blast at a time. . . .
The surrounding roads are mined and the port blocked. Food is running out, and the Russians have stopped humanitarian attempts to bring it in. Electricity is mostly gone and water is sparse, with residents melting snow to drink. Some parents have even left their newborns at the hospital, perhaps hoping to give them a chance at life in the one place with decent electricity and water.
People burn scraps of furniture in makeshift grills to warm their hands in the freezing cold and cook what little food there still is. . . . Death is everywhere. Local officials have tallied more than 2,500 deaths in the siege, but many bodies can't be counted because of the endless shelling. They have told families to leave their dead outside in the streets because it's too dangerous to hold funerals. . . .
This agony fits in with Putin's goals. The siege is a military tactic popularized in medieval times and designed to crush a population through starvation and violence, allowing an attacking force to spare its own soldiers the cost of entering a hostile city. Instead, civilians are the ones left to die, slowly and painfully.
Putin has refined the tactic during his years in power, first in the Chechen city of Grozny in 2000 and then in the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2016. He reduced both to ruins.
"It epitomizes Russian warfare, what we see now in terms of the siege," said Mathieu Boulegue, a researcher for Chatham House's Russia program.
By March 9, the sound of Russian fighter jets in Mariupol was enough to send people screaming for cover — anything to avoid the airstrikes they knew would follow, even if they didn't know where.
The jets rumbled across the sky, this time decimating the maternity hospital. They left a crater two stories deep in the courtyard.
Rescuers rushed a pregnant woman through the rubble and light snow as she stroked her bloodied belly, face blanched and head lolling listlessly to the side. Her baby was dying inside her, and she knew it, medics said.
"Kill me now!" she screamed, as they struggled to save her life at another hospital even closer to the front line.
The baby was born dead. A half-hour later, the mother died too. The doctors had no time to learn either of their names. . . .
[Serhiy] Orlov, the deputy mayor, predicted worse is soon to come. Most of the city remains trapped.
"Our defenders will defend to the last bullet," he said. "But people are dying without water and food, and I think in the next several days we will count hundreds and thousands of deaths."
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