AP — Across Mariupol, Russian workers are demolishing bombed-out houses at least one a day, hauling away mutilated bodies and rubble.
Russian military columns rumbled down the wide boulevard of what was fast becoming a walled city, and Russian soldiers, builders, administrators, and doctors replaced thousands of dead or departed Ukrainians.
Many of the city’s Ukrainian street names are being returned to Soviet names, and Mira Avenue via Mariupol will be designated as Lenin Avenue. Even the large sign with the name of the city at the entrance is Russified, repainted in the red, white and blue colors of the Russian flag and Russian spelling.
Eight months after Mariupol fell into Russian hands, Russia is destroying all traces of Ukraine — along with evidence of war crimes buried in its buildings.
The few open schools teach Russian, telephone and television are in Russian, the Ukrainian currency is disappearing, and Mariupol is now in the Moscow time zone. According to the Associated Press, a new Russian city is springing up on the ruins of old Mariupol, with materials supplied by at least one European company.
But the AP investigation into life in occupied Mariupol also highlights what its residents already know all too well: whatever the Russians do, they are building a city of the dead. The Associated Press has found more than 10,000 new graves now in Mariupol, and the death toll could be three times higher than previous estimates of at least 25,000. A former Ukrainian city has also been gutted, and AP estimates Russia plans to demolish more than 50,000 homes.
Associated Press reporters were the last international media in Mariupol to escape heavy shelling in March before Russian troops took the city. Here is the story of what has happened since then. The Associated Press contacted many whose tragedies were documented in photos and videos during the bloodiest days of the Russian siege.
Death surrounded the rapidly growing cemetery on the outskirts of Mariupol, and its stench hung over the city until autumn. The memory of Mariupol and the survivors of exile haunts.
Each of the dozens of residents interviewed by the Associated Press knew someone who died during the siege of Mariupol, which began with the February 24 invasion. Every day, up to 30 people arrive at the morgue in the hope of finding loved ones.
Lydia Yerashova watched her 5-year-old son Artem and 7-year-old niece Angelina die in Russian shelling in March. The family hastily buried the younger cousin in a makeshift grave in the yard before fleeing Mariupol.
They returned in July to rebury the children, only to learn along the way that the bodies had been exhumed and placed in storage. As we approached the city center, each district became gloomier than the previous one.
“This is scary. Wherever you look, no matter how you look,” said Yerashova. “All black and ruined.”
Both she and her sister-in-law couldn’t resist going to the warehouse to identify the child’s body. Their husbands are brothers, and they chose two small coffins – pink and blue – to put them together in one grave.
Yerashova, who is currently in Canada, says Russia’s reconstruction plan is unlikely to give Mariupol back what it has lost.
“Our lives have been taken. Our children were taken away,” she said. “This is ridiculous and stupid. How to restore a dead city where people are killed at every turn?
The Associated Press investigation is based on interviews with 30 residents of Mariupol, 13 of whom live under Russian occupation, satellite imagery, hundreds of videos filmed inside the city, and Russian documents showing the master plan. Collectively, they document a massive effort to suppress the collective history and memory of Mariupol as a Ukrainian city.
From the first day of the invasion, Mariupol became a target for the Kremlin. Just 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Russian border, the city is a port on the Sea of ​​Azov, vital to Russian supply lines.
The city was mercilessly subjected to air raids and artillery shelling, communications were cut off, food and water were cut off. However, Mariupol did not give up for 86 days. By the time the last Ukrainian fighters who had taken refuge in the Azovstal steel plant surrendered in May, Mariupol had become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.
This resistance came at a high cost. The fullness of the destruction of Mariupol by Russia can be seen today. Video and satellite imagery taken throughout the city showed that munitions had left marks on almost every building in its 166 square kilometers (64 sq mi).
Large swaths of the city were colorless and lifeless, with fire-blackened walls, demolition dust, and crumbling dead trees. But the biggest damage done to Mariupol can be measured by the death toll, which will never be fully known.
An Associated Press analysis of satellite imagery taken over the last eight months of the occupation showed that 8,500 new graves have appeared in the remote cemetery in Stary Krym alone, and there may be several bodies under each mound. There are at least three more trench cemeteries around the city, including one that Ukrainians built themselves when the blockade began.
There are at least 10,300 new graves scattered across Mariupol, according to the Associated Press, confirmed by three forensic experts who specialize in mass graves. Thousands more bodies may never make it to the cemetery.
Back in May, when the city finally fell, the exiled municipality estimated that at least 25,000 people had died. But since June, at least three people in the city have said the death toll is three times or more higher, based on conversations with workers collecting street corpses for the Russian occupation authorities.
Mariupol resident Svetlana Chebotareva, who fled in March, said her neighbor died in a nearby apartment and his body is still there. This fall, Chebotareva returned home just long enough to collect her belongings, as residents are free to come and go as long as they pass through the checkpoints. She said the Russians wanted to say thank you for some of the new apartments they provided.
“I don’t know how you can now give us candy in exchange for destroyed houses and dead people,” she said in Kyiv. “And they still believe it.”
Signs with the appeal “Dear residents” were pasted on the peeling, corroded walls of the entrance.
So those who remained in Mariupol learned that their houses were going to be demolished. Often, despite broken windows, frozen pipes and no electricity, they still live inside because they have nowhere else to go.
After reviewing hundreds of photos and video clips, as well as documents from the occupying authorities, the Associated Press has determined that more than 300 buildings in Mariupol have already been demolished or are about to be demolished. Some are single-family homes, but most are Khrushchev-style high-rise apartment buildings built by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during the housing crisis of the 1960s. There are about 180 apartments or more in each building, and they are designed to accommodate as many families as possible.
“There was no discussion, people were not ready,” said the Mariupol activist, who, like everyone else in Mariupol, asked not to be named for fear of reprisals. “People still live in basements. Where they go is unclear.
According to another resident who still works in the city, only the Russians themselves removed the rubble. He said the stated reason was to avoid a crash.
But Piotr Andryushenko, an aide to the mayor of Mariupol who is in exile in Dnipro, believes the real reason is to prevent people from seeing the decomposing bodies being dragged away. He said that in many buildings, especially in the Azovstal area, there were between 50 and 100 bodies each, which could never be properly buried. These deaths will remain unreported.
Mitropolitskaya, 110 is one of the buildings in Russia for demolition, which is planned to be demolished at any time.
The smell of freshly baked bread still brings Dr. Inna Nepomnishaya back to her apartment on the sixth floor on the last night of March. Seeing the street price of bread in a besieged city, she decided to bake it herself.
When her brother-in-law arrived the next morning, there was a smell in the air. Time to leave, he insisted. Russian troops are approaching.
Nepomniachtchaya was at her daughter’s house at dusk on March 11, when Russian tanks rolled up to her house. The tank opened fire at 110 Mitropolitskaya Street, as it was observed and recorded by AP correspondents upstairs from the nearby Second Hospital.
The shells smashed the walls of Nepomniachtchi’s apartment and destroyed the walls of the neighbors above, below and behind it. Most of the neighbors huddle in the basement, but Lydia and Natalia, two elderly women, cannot go up and down the stairs.
Their bodies will soon be buried in the yard. A few weeks later, an Associated Press video shows the rough grave still in existence.
Ties with the city were severed, and Nepomniachtchaya was unaware of the fate of her apartment until her family fled to Ukrainian-controlled territory. Like many who left Mariupol, she still talks about the city in the present tense.
“I live in Mariupol, this is my home,” she said by candlelight in a cafe in Dnipro, another city without electricity. “This house was my castle and they took it from me.”
Buildings on both sides are also on the list for demolition. One of them was subjected to at least one air strike on March 11, the walls of the other were in ruins.
Now Russia is moving towards the historical center of the city. According to a video released by Russian television, in October, Russian authorities tore down a monument in Mariupol to the victims of the Holodomor, a Soviet-organized famine in the 1930s that claimed the lives of millions of Ukrainians. They also worked on two murals commemorating the victims of Russia’s 2014 attacks on Ukraine, according to images obtained by the Associated Press.
“They spend a lot of time on things like removing Ukrainian identification and very little time meeting the needs of the people of Mariupol,” said Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitors eastern Ukraine. “This is indeed a very cruel, inhuman colonial experiment unfolding before our very eyes.”
In an attempt to level the ruins of Ukraine, Russia is hatching a plan to build a new city with a new population. Its centerpiece will be the historic Mariupol Theatre, according to a master plan first published by Russian website The Village in August and published by the Associated Press.
The Majestic Drama Theater served as the city’s main bomb shelter before two Russian airstrikes were launched on March 16. An Associated Press investigation uncovered hundreds of deaths, and locals said the site smelled of corpses all summer.
To hide the ruins, the Russian authorities erected a screen so high that it could be seen from space, engraving the outline of the theater on the panels, a ghostly reminder of its past life.
The document also plans to restore the ruins of the destroyed Azovstal steel plant, the last stronghold of resistance in Ukraine. The site is scheduled to be converted into an industrial park by the end of next year, although there are no signs of any work starting.
But the Russian military complex was erected in record time, according to Maxar Technologies satellite imagery, which shows a massive U-shaped building with Russian army slogans on the roof.
Russia has built at least 14 new apartment buildings — just a fraction of the number that have collapsed — and is renovating at least two hospitals hit by shelling. Video obtained by the Associated Press shows rows of pallets stacked on top of each other with insulation from Rockwool, a Danish company that has retained its Russian division despite criticism. Building materials are not allowed.
In a statement, Rockwool vice president of communications Michael Zarin said the insulation panels were distributed “without the company’s knowledge or consent” and that he hopes its products will help restore health, warmth and shelter to Ukrainians.
The video shows that there is no furniture visible in the windows of the new apartment, and there are few people on the sidewalk outside. According to many people who remained in Mariupol, only pensioners, the disabled and people with professional connections receive it.