By Galina Korol | 2024-02-01

KYIV -- Ukrainian activists have submitted a case to The Hague to hold Russia accountable for its slaughter of residents of Mariupol.

For more than a year the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) painstakingly gathered evidence for the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the atrocities Russia committed in the city beginning on February 24, 2022.

The organization focused on documenting three categories of crimes: the killing of civilians, the creation of living conditions aimed at obliterating Mariupol residents and the deportation of children, said Mykhailo Romanov, a coauthor of the submission and a lawyer for KHPG.

"Proving an act of killing isn't hard: if someone aims an assault rifle at someone and pulls the trigger, that shows that the act is intentional and not accidental," he told Kontur. "However, proving that he wanted to commit that act precisely because [the victim] was Ukrainian is very hard."

Russian forces seized Mariupol in May 2022 after three brutal months of battles. Rights activists gathered the evidence of the crimes committed by Russia mostly from open sources since they had no access to the city.

"We tried to document and archive videos, including one where a tank fired at an apartment building almost at point-blank range. We documented killings directly from firearms, and killings using artillery and air strikes," Romanov said.

Prosecutors at The Hague are reviewing the KHPG file and will decide whether it has grounds for a case.

Terrorism and genocide

It is difficult to say how many people Russia has killed in Mariupol to date as the occupying forces continue to cover their tracks.

The official death toll is 11,362 people, including 508 children, according to Yuriy Belousov, director of the War Crimes Department of the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office.

"But I think it's at least 10 times more, unfortunately," Belousov said in an interview with RBC Ukraine published on November 2.

More than 20,000 people had died in the city, Mariupol mayor Vadym Boychenko said in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) posted on YouTube April 13.

Dmytro Zabavin, a member of the Mariupol City Council, was living in Mariupol with his family until March 14, 2022.

Any survivor of the Russian occupation will say that the number of victims far exceeds the number recorded, he said.

"Would you believe that the Russians destroyed all the fire stations in late February and early March [2022]? They basically destroyed every possibility for saving lives," he told Kontur.

"And when they started to bombard the city with missiles and high-explosive [FAB-500] bombs, more than 1,000 direct hits on apartment buildings were recorded," he said. "Large numbers of people taking refuge in shelters were buried alive by Russian shelling."

Russia's actions in Mariupol can be described in two words: terrorism and genocide, he said.

"On March 9 and 10 [2022] there were many murdered people on the streets. They were just covered with sheets and other random things," he said. "People were shelled while they were trying to dig graves in their [apartment] courtyards -- they died while they were trying to bury their loved ones."

Barely surviving

When the war began, Vitaliy Vradiy, 23, spent more than two weeks in Mariupol.

He and his family fled there after a bomb landed on the house next to theirs on February 25, 2022, in their home village of Sartana about 12km from the city.

However, instead of finding refuge in Mariupol, Vradiy said they barely survived.

"People were dying from their wounds because there was no way to provide medical care. Dogs were carrying human body parts around," he told Kontur. "People were being buried in flowerbeds."

Because the occupying forces destroyed all the critical infrastructure and were closing in on the city, there was a dire shortage of food and water, Vradiy said.

"People were just surviving," Vradiy said. "They found a spring and went to get water from it, but the Russians found out and then started bombing it."

Residents would collect rainwater and melt snow and ice for their household needs, said Zabavin.

Vradiy and his family managed to break out of Mariupol on March 16, 2022, via the humanitarian corridor.

"[The Russian soldiers] ... did very methodical checks at the roadblocks," he said, adding that they examined phones and strip-searched the Ukrainians for markings on their shoulders from carrying rifles.

"When we were already passing through the so-called buffer zone -- the area between the last Russian roadblock and the first Ukrainian one -- they shot us in the back," Vradiy said.

"I had a bullet go through my skull, a wound in my arm,[my nephew] was shot in the stomach, my sister in the collarbone, and her husband was severely wounded," he said.

Vradiy is now safe: after being treated for his wounds, he went to Germany for rehabilitation. He lives there with his mother for now.

Challenges ahead

Proving acts of genocide will be a difficult process, according to Yuriy Bilous, a rights activist and lawyer who represents victims of war crimes in Ukrainian and international courts.

"From a legal standpoint, it's not easy," he told Kontur. "But it is possible, and we need international support. You need different types of evidence, and you need the best and brightest minds who study genocide in different countries."

Ultimately, courts need to try everyone who is involved in the invasion of Ukraine under the leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly said publicly that Ukraine is not a state and has no right to exist, Bilous said.

"Calling for genocide is also a crime," he said. "It has pushed [Russians] to commit the most horrific crimes in Mariupol because they have realized that the entire governmental hierarchy supports them."