Thousands of people could be buried in mass graves detected near the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, according to the city’s deputy mayor.

New satellite images, published by US technology firm Maxar, appear to show a major expansion of graves that originally began to appear at the end of March.

Maxar said the graves are in four sections of linear rows about 85m long. They are located the village of Manhush, about 20km from Mariupol.

It comes after the Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed his troops had ‘liberated’ the city and ordered a blockade around the last remaining area of Ukrainian resistance there.

Satellite images showing mass graves in Manhush near the city of Mariupol. Image: Maxar

On Newstalk Breakfast his morning, Mariupol’s Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov said about 21,000 people had been killed in the city since the siege began.

He said bodies were lying on the streets for many weeks after the invasion began; however, once the massacre at Bucha hit international headlines, Russian troops began hiding the bodies.

He said the massacre in Mariupol is about ten times bigger than that carried out by Russian troops in Bucha.

Mr Orlov said Mariupol “does not exist anymore as a city” and noted that 90% of it is damaged and 45% of it is destroyed.

He said around 900 condominiums have been “totally destroyed” alongside around 21,000 private homes.

Massacre

“As you can understand from that level of destruction, we have a lot of victims,” he said. “In our estimation, the total number of killed people is about 21,000 in our city.

“Several weeks ago, ten days ago, one month ago, there were a lot of dead bodies lying on the street and at some point, they started to disappear.

“It has mostly happened after Bucha became well known. We understand that having such information in the world about these war crimes and genocide, Russia started to hide the victims of its war.

“They totally blocked Mariupol they do not all to evacuate for any reason they do not allow to reach Mariupol for any reason and they started to hide bodies.”

"Just totally horrific"

He said the situation is “just totally horrific” – noting that many of his own friends have been killed in the attacks on the city and he does not know whether his relatives are alive or dead.

Mr Orlov said the Kremlin is now carrying out “genocide acts” in the city by forcibly deporting its citizens to concentration camps in the far reaches of Russia.

“I am absolutely sure and you should know that it is genocide acts,” he said.

“They just deport our citizens without any choice to Russia and pass them through to concentration camps. Then we are finding our civil citizens all over Russia. Even in Siberia and even in far eastern Russia.

“They are just destroying us as a nation. Ukraine as a nation. That is what Stalin did, what the Soviet Union did with nations early on.”

Evacuation

He said the citizens of Mariupol cannot trust any humanitarian corridor agreed with Russia, because they can’t trust the Kremlin to honour any ceasefire.

“They continue it Each day, each night, each hour each minute they continue to do air strikes, they continue to shell with missiles and to attack with tanks,” he said.

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