The true human cost of Russia’s siege of Mariupol was exposed Thursday with the revelation that rescue workers are extracting hundreds of bodies from the rubble of bombed-out buildings across the Ukrainian port city.
Fifty to 100 bodies are being found in many buildings, city officials said. Mayor Petro Andryushchenko said on the Telegram app that the bodies are being taken in an “endless caravan of death” to a morgue, landfills and other places.
At least 21,000 Mariupol civilians were killed during the weeks-long Russian siege, Ukrainian authorities have estimated. The Kremlin said it used pinpoint strikes focused on military targets, but multiple cities have been left in ruin by endless bombardments as Russian forces use their long-distance strike advantage to pound Ukraine with relative impunity.
Mariupol, once home to 450,000 people, now houses less than 100,000, authorities say. It is fully occupied by Russian troops.
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Latest developments:
►Senior members of the European Union’s parliament are urging EU leaders to make Ukraine and neighboring Moldova official candidates for joining the 27-nation bloc. The parliament in recent years had balked at Ukraine’s candidacy, citing rampant corruption.
►President Joe Biden plans to visit European allies Germany and Spain this month as he tries to hold together the coalition opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The White House said Biden will attend a Group of Seven summit June 25 in the Bavarian Alps and a meeting of NATO countries June 28 in Madrid.
►Russia has restored fresh-water supply from southern Ukraine to Crimea through the North Crimean Canal, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a statement, a significant step toward Moscow’s goal of connecting territory it controls to the peninsula it annexed in 2014. Rail and road transportation also have been connected.
Moscow’s chief rabbi in exile after refusing to support invasion
Moscow’s Chief Rabbi is living in exile after Russian authorities demanded that he publicly support the war in Ukraine. Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt flew to Hungary to raise money for refugees in early March and has not returned to Russia, his New York-based daughter-in-law Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt said in a Twitter post. She said her in-laws had been raising funds for refugees in Eastern Europe, then visited her grandfather in a Jerusalem hospital. Pinchas Goldschmidt was re-elected this week in absentia to another seven-year term as Moscow’s chief rabbi.
“Can finally share that my in-laws, Moscow Chief Rabbi @PinchasRabbi & Rebbetzin Dara Goldschmidt, have been put under pressure by authorities to publicly support the ‘special operation’ in Ukraine — and refused,” she tweeted. “They are now in exile from the community they loved, built & raised their children in, over 33 years.”
Contributing: The Associated Press