According to a new analysis submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC), russia used "deliberate starvation tactics" during its 85-day siege of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in the Donetsk Region in early 2022, amounting to a war crime.
This is reported by The Guardian.
It is indicated that such a conclusion is the basis of the dossier that Global Rights Compliance lawyers, working in cooperation with the Ukrainian government, are submitting to the ICC in The Hague. It alleges that russia and its leaders intended to kill and harm large numbers of civilians.
According to estimates, during the siege and capture of the city of Mariupol at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, 22,000 people were killed. The civilian population was left without water, gas and electricity for several days after the siege, when the temperature dropped below minus 10 degrees.
Siege of Mariupol. Photo: telegram/Mariupol City Council
Global Rights Compliance partner Catriona Murdoch said the aim of the investigation was to "find out if there was a wider narrative", which consisted in the deliberate denial of food and other necessities of life by the russian military and its leadership, a strategy of starvation that can be equated to a war crime.
"We saw that the russian attack had four phases, starting with attacks on civilian infrastructure, cutting off electricity, heating and water supplies. Then humanitarian evacuations were rejected and even attacked while aid could not get in," Murdoch said.
According to her, in the third stage, the remaining critical infrastructure objects, terrorizing civilians receiving aid, and bombing water supply points became the targets of attacks. And in the fourth stage, russia carried out strategic attacks with the aim of destroying or capturing any remaining infrastructure facilities.
Photo: telegram/Mariupol City Council
She said the staged attack on Mariupol demonstrated that russia planned to take over the frontline city with no mercy on its civilian population, estimated to number 450,000, before a full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022.
The dossier concludes that during the siege, about 90% of medical institutions and residential buildings in the city were destroyed or damaged, food distribution points and humanitarian evacuation routes were bombed.
Consequences of the russian shelling of Mariupol. Photo: telegram/Mariupol City Council
The report states that, given the importance of Mariupol and the centralization of decision-making in russia, responsibility for the deaths of thousands of civilians lies at the highest level.
"Vladimir Putin is guilty and echelons of the russian military leadership," Murdoch said.
The publication notes that starvation and the denial of the comforts necessary for civilian life are considered war crimes, but this remains a relatively new area of international law, and no accused perpetrators have yet been brought to justice.
According to the lawyers, at first they were not sure how easy it would be to create a war crimes dossier on Mariupol, as the russian occupation made it difficult to collect evidence, despite the fierce fighting and the large number of casualties.
But they developed a technique that uses a custom-built algorithm to match the destruction of specific locations tracked by satellite imagery with what explosives experts have assessed as russian attacks.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, in Mariupol, during the filming of a "plot" for russian TV, a russian propagandist accidentally admitted how tanks with the letter "Z" drove into the yards of local residents and shot directly at houses.
Meanwhile, until now during the occupation, the russians have not been able to fix the sewage system, which is why sewage flows from the streets into local rivers, and from there into the Sea of Azov. The occupiers have already banned swimming on local beaches.
In the temporarily occupied Mariupol, the body of a dead dolphin washed ashore. The city council emphasizes that these are the consequences of russia's destruction of the Sea of Azov ecosystem.
In addition, the occupiers in Mariupol destroy archaeological monuments, cut down trees, hide the consequences of the terrorist act of bombing the drama theater, steal grain and do not respond to the problems and appeals of local residents.
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