Cemetery workers load the bodies of civilians killed in Bucha in a truck to be transported to the morgue on the outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine, on Wednesday, April 6, 2022. (AP Photo / Rodrigo Abd) The mayor of the besieged port of Mariupol said the number of civilians killed there had risen to more than 5,000 on Wednesday as Ukraine gathered evidence of Russian atrocities on the outskirts of Kiev and was preparing for what might be a major battle for control of the country’s industry. East. Ukrainian authorities have continued to collect dead bodies in devastated cities outside the capital, amid indications that Moscow troops have killed civilians indiscriminately before retreating in recent days. In other news, the United States and its Western allies have moved to impose new sanctions on the Kremlin for war crimes. Russia has completed the withdrawal of all of its estimated 24,000 or more troops from the northern Kiev and Chernihiv regions, sending them to Belarus or Russia for supplies and reorganization, a US defense official said on condition of anonymity. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Moscow is now raising funds and trying to push deeper into the east of the country, where the Kremlin has said its goal is to “liberate” Donbass, the Russian-speaking industrial heart of Ukraine. “The fate of our place and our people is being judged. We know what we are fighting for. “And we will do everything to win,” Zelenski said, six weeks after the war. Ukrainian authorities have urged people living in Donbass to leave now, in the face of an impending Russian attack, while there is still time. “Later, people will come under fire,” said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, “and there is nothing we can do to help them.” A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence estimates, said it would take up to a month for Russian forces destroyed by the fighting to regroup for a major push in eastern Ukraine. Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko said that of the more than 5,000 civilians killed during weeks of Russian bombing and street fighting, 210 were children. He said Russian forces had bombed hospitals, including one in which 50 people had been burned to death. Boichenko said more than 90% of the city’s infrastructure had been destroyed. Attacks on the strategic southern city in the Sea of Azov have cut off food, water, fuel and medicine and pulverized homes and businesses. British defense officials say 160,000 people remain trapped in the pre-war city of 430,000. A humanitarian aid convoy accompanied by the Red Cross had been trying unsuccessfully to enter the city for days. The occupation of Mariupol will allow Russia to secure a continuous land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow occupied from Ukraine in 2014. In the north, Ukrainian authorities say the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in cities around Kyiv, victims of what Zelenskyy has described as a Russian campaign of murder, rape, mutilation and torture. Some victims were apparently shot at close range. Some were found with their hands tied. At a cemetery in the city of Bucha, workers began loading more than 60 corpses that had apparently been collected in recent days on a grocery truck for transport to a facility for further investigation. More corpses were to be collected in Bucha. The Associated Press saw two in a house in a quiet neighborhood. From time to time there was a suffocating explosion of workers clearing the city of mines and other unexploded ordnance. Police said they found at least 20 bodies in the Makariv district west of Kiev. In the village of Andriivka, residents said the Russians arrived in early March and picked up the phones of locals. Some people were arrested and later released. Others experienced unknown fortunes. Some have described housing for weeks in cellars commonly used to store vegetables for the winter. The soldiers had left and Russian armored personnel carriers, a tank and other vehicles were sitting damaged on both sides of the road that crossed the village. Several buildings were turned into piles of bricks and corrugated metal. The residents fought without heating, electricity or cooking gas.
