WAR IN UKRAINE: April 12, 2022
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 46
Cemetery workers prepare a body for burial in Bucha, Ukraine. Credit: Rodrigo Abd/AP
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko told Associated Press on April 11 that more than 10,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege of his city, and that the death toll could surpass 20,000 after weeks of attacks. The mayor told The AP that Russian forces have taken many bodies to a huge shopping center where there are storage facilities and refrigerators. “Mobile crematoriums have arrived in the form of trucks: You open it, and there is a pipe inside and these bodies are burned,” he said. The mayor said about 120,000 civilians are in dire need of food, water, warmth and communications. Only those residents who have passed the Russian “filtration camps” are released from the city.
Meanwhile, the US and Britain say they are looking into reports that chemical weapons have been used by Russian forces attacking Mariupol. Its deputy mayor Serhiy Orlov says Ukrainian forces are holding out against Russia in the besieged city - BBC
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine can break the siege of Mariupol if it receives heavy weapons from the West. He emphasized that while he believes Ukraine will receive “almost all weapons necessary,” more Ukrainian lives will be lost the longer the West delays. He also added that EU sanctions must be so strong that “even words about weapons of mass destruction from the Russian side are no longer heard.”
More stories of horrific atrocities committed by Russia forces in villages around Kyiv Oblast continue to emerge. The BBC’s Yogita Limaye reports on a woman who was raped by Russian soldiers and then they killed her husband. "At gunpoint, he took me to a house nearby. He ordered me: 'Take your clothes off or I'll shoot you.' He kept threatening to kill me if I didn't do as he said. Then he started raping me," she said. The woman went back home and found her husband. He had been shot in the abdomen. Separately, CNN’s Clarissa Ward reports on a pair of villages that were occupied by Russians for more than a month and found "endless accounts of horror, executions, arbitrary detentions and more."
We are learning more details of Russian President Putin’s new henchman to lead the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine. According to an Israeli military official quoted by Haaretz, Gen. Alexander Dvornikov’s strategy in Syria was based on using Russian air superiority to indiscriminately bomb urban centers. “The aim was to cause as much damage as possible, and to terrorize civilians and sow fear among the rebel groups. Dvornikov and his senior subordinates didn’t hesitate to target hospitals, schools and humanitarian sites.” It adds that Dvornikov may conclude that “a prolonged campaign of attrition against civilians, taken from the Syrian playbook – using extensive firepower of missiles, rockets, artillery shells and air bombardment – can over time achieve Putin’s goals, even without very advanced military technology like the West and Israel have.”
The World Health Organization (WH) says roughly 300 health facilities are in conflict areas and 1,000 health facilities are in changed areas of control, which leaves the health system vulnerable to infrastructural damage and severe disruptions in critical services. “This means there is limited or no access to medicines, health facilities, and health-care workers in some areas,” it said. As of yesterday, 11 April, WHO has verified 108 incidents of attacks on health care in Ukraine. This could be attacks on health facilities, personnel, transport, supplies, and warehouses. At least 73 people have died and 51 have been injured in the attacks.
