White Horse in Play: Mariupol Has Been “Wiped off the Face of the Earth,” Ukrainian Governor Says, Dead Bodies “Carpeted the Streets

HNewsWire: After weeks of siege and bombing, Russian soldiers have taken control of significant areas of Mariupol, according to the city's mayor on Monday.

"We don't have control over everything," Mayor Vadym Boichenko told News Cable on Monday. "Unfortunately, we are now in the hands of the occupiers."

According to Boichenko, less than half of the city's peacetime people survived. "To our estimations, around 160,000 people are now residing in the besieged city of Mariupol, where it is hard to survive due to a lack of water, power, heat, and connectivity," he stated. "It's also rather frightening."

"The enemy may recover the ground Mariupol once stood on," he continued, "but the city of Mariupol has been wiped off the face of the earth by the Russian Federation, by people who will never be able to rebuild it." "Only Ukraine has the ability to reconstruct Mariupol." Associated Press photographer

In terms of the city's destiny, he said that it is now "no more" and that the Russians had nothing else to grab. In other news, Reuters reports that "Russia issued remaining Ukrainian troops an ultimatum to lay down their arms on Sunday in the city of Mariupol, which Moscow claimed its forces almost totally controlled in what would be the almost two-month war's largest seizure."

All of this comes only days after Ukrainian defense ministry spokesperson Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said that Russia employed long-range bombers to target Ukrainian positions in the port city for the first time.

"On April 14, two Russian strategic heavy bombers, Tu-95/-160, fired cruise missiles from Krasnodar Krai, Russian Federation airspace, and targeted Ukrainian territory," he stated. Tu-22M3 long-range bombers dropped bombs for the first time since the beginning of the armed assault. This airstrike occurred, striking Mariupol.

Earlier this week, Mariupol's mayor claimed that over 10,000 residents had killed throughout the battle, which saw the city on the Sea of Azov bombarded and besieged almost from the beginning of the invasion.

There were dead corpses all over the streets, but no one else could confirm the enormous death toll that he had provided.

"The mayor of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol claimed Monday that more than 10,000 citizens had perished in the Russian siege of his city, and that the death toll may exceed 20,000," according to the Associated Press.

Bloomberg reported on Sunday that Russia may be considering a naval invasion of soldiers to overrun the last remaining Ukrainian troops in and around the city:

Ukraine has warned of a probable Russian naval invasion at Mariupol, as well as additional air attacks. Russia demanded that the beleaguered city's surviving soldiers surrender. Many are believed to be within the massive Azovstal steelworks. Based on intercepted phone conversations, Moscow claims "foreign mercenaries" are among them.

Recently, UN authorities cautioned that the exact civilian death toll in the nation may never be discovered and is likely far greater than current official figures.

Russia has recently said that the emphasis of its war operations would remain on freeing the Donbas area in the east. This comes as Russia apparently has a last holdout detachment of Ukrainian soldiers battling in the important southeast port city of Mariupol.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "Russia called on the last Ukrainian troops fighting in Mariupol on Sunday to lay down their arms and observe an hours-long cease-fire that it said would allow them to leave the battlefield unscathed as it closed in on capturing the strategic port city after weeks of heavy bombardment."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN in a new weekend interview released Sunday that his troops would not give up an inch of ground in the east, and that the battle for the Donbas might decide the outcome of the conflict. He told Jake Tapper that a robust defense of Donbas would almost certainly mean that the Russians will be stymied in their effort to retake Kiev.
The Ukrainian presidency's office is shown.

"This is why it is critical for us to not let them, to hold our ground, because this fight... it has the potential to change the direction of the whole war," Zelensky added.

"Because I don't trust Russia's military and leadership," he continued. "That is why we realize that just because we beat them off and they fled, and they were going away from Kyiv – from the north, from Chernihiv, and from that direction – doesn't mean that if they conquer Donbas, they won't come back."

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said last week that roughly 31,000 residents have been forcibly deported and sent to Russian "filtration camps" in Novoazovsk – a Ukrainian border town 35 miles from Mariupol and just 9 miles from the Russian border.

Novoazovsk is located in the Donetsk People’s Republic – a breakaway region in Ukraine’s most eastern front that has been backed by Russian forces and engaged in armed conflict with the Ukrainian army since 2014.