As many as 50 hospital patients in Mariupol, Ukraine, who resisted attempts to forcibly deport them were slain by Russian forces in what the city’s mayor termed a “revenge attack” against non-sympathizers.
A week before a 500-kilogram high explosive ‘FAB-500’ bomb was dropped over the critical care unit where scores of patients were being treated, the soldiers sought to relocate groups of patients and staff to an area under Russian control.
“It was retribution for disobedience,” Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boychenko, explained.
“It is an intentional act. They intentionally murdered patients in this hospital”.
Even though many of those currently believed to be deceased had refused to leave, some patients who were unable to go due to disease had little choice.
There is no official account of what transpired; many hospital records were destroyed.
“I had no idea what day it was most of the time when I was treating patients since it was so dark,” stated one anesthetist.
However, when their tales are pieced together, they imply that a Russian reconnaissance mission and a mass deportation attempt occurred before the tragic attack on April 2nd.
A senior western intelligence officer stated that the attack is “proof that Russia has a considerably clearer understanding of precisely who will be killed when it decides to attack” than previously believed.
April 24: The invasion
Mrs. Zubko, a 60-year-old inhabitant of Mariupol’s Left Bank, was transported to Hospital Number One on February 24, a few hours after the invasion began. The treatment she received was efficient and effective. While at home, she was struck by artillery and suffered injuries to her arms and legs.
A second victim, a man in his fifties who was standing close to a bus stop, was hurt in the same incident. He was also saved and discharged swiftly since the hospital still had power, water, and ample supplies of medicine.
The hospital complex consists of eight departments housed in a cluster of buildings, with the traumatology department, the largest, located at the northern end. By the conclusion of the first week of the invasion, every bed in the hospital was occupied.
“The 27th of February was the saddest day of my life,” says Hrankov Yelyzar, an anesthesiologist who fled when the Russians occupied his hometown.
“It was on that day that I cared for my first kid patient during the invasion. She was the first child we tried to save who had died. We attempted to raise her but were unsuccessful. I just sobbed, sobbed, sobbed. I was unable to remove my face from my hands”.
Up until mid-March, despite severe shelling a short distance away, the hospital itself remained substantially unharmed.
“We lived in the hospital from March 15 to March 20, and half of it was damaged,” claimed a former staff member.
Approximately 21 March: The attempted deportation.
A 15-second video clip depicts a line of people carrying backpacks and carrier bags while tiptoeing across the ruins of a collapsed building while wearing warm coats and helmets. Their faces cannot be seen, but they appear to be marching toward an armored truck in an orderly method.
The tape was broadcast by Ukrainian officials, who claim it depicts doctors and patients being forcibly expelled from another hospital in Mariupol, Hospital No. 4. It confirms that the tactic, which was observed in other areas of the city, was employed by invading forces within medical facilities.
In the final days of March, Russian troops invaded the hospital to compel the employees and patients to relocate to Russia or Russian-controlled territory within Ukraine. Some opposed.
“Doctors disobeyed and refused to comply with the conditions that criminal authorities and Russian forces demanded,” according to Mayor Boychenko.
The practice of deporting Ukrainian civilians to filtration camps in Russia is widespread among invading forces. However, Western sources believe that invading troops were more discriminating in Mariupol than elsewhere, giving priority to doctors over patients during so-called “evacuation operations”.
Patients and physicians are seen being taken from another hospital in Mariupol as part of Russian authorities’ forcible deportations.
Prosecutors of war crimes are inclined to view the testimony of medical professionals as more reliable compared to that of patients, whose memories may be discredited due to the effects of medication, illness, or injury. The removal of doctors is therefore believed to have been an integral part of Russian efforts to conceal the truth.
Lydia, a nurse who worked at the hospital until early April, explains that Chechen officers arrived earlier to evacuate the land.
“They were intelligence or something, and they relayed information about the otolaryngology (ears, nose, and throat) ward’s civilian patients”.
Her testimony, provided from Russian-occupied territory, seemed to show that the Russian military had documented the locations within the buildings where patients had taken sanctuary.
Sergiy Mudryi, who worked as a physician at Mariupol Medical in March before leaving for Kyiv, claims that intelligence officials were supported by sympathetic hospital personnel in determining which areas of the hospital were occupied.
“They were aware that there were other people in the basement of the same ward where they were. They knew there was a third basement of the neurology ward and a fourth basement of the trauma ward since they were in communication with a nurse in the administration ward’s basement.
However, even some individuals who would have embraced the Russian invitation to relocate were unable to do so.
Dr. Sergiy Mudryi states that staff members assisted intelligence personnel in determining which areas of the hospital were occupied.
Dr. Olga Kononova, who fled to Zaporizhia, remarked, “Initially, there were patients who were unable to move or were moving slowly.
Patients in the hospital wards were either scarcely mobile or entirely immobilized and unable to walk on their own. In addition, their relatives and families with children made each ward a melting pot”.
April 2 is the date of the attack
To help preserve the city, Mariupol authorities put out a Telegram message on April 6 requesting additional limitations on the sale of Russian oil and gas. First mentioned in the fifth and final paragraph was a huge assault on Hospital Number One.
It stated, “Russian terrorist forces launched three big bombs on a children’s hospital and demolished one of the municipal hospital No. 1 buildings”.
Doctor Hrankov Yelyzar stated, “They bombed these structures, these buildings began to burn, and all the people within this building perished as well”.
Mariupol was a communications black hole, and local government authorities operated from Zaporizhia. It took approximately four days for the news of the attack to reach the rest of the globe, and even then little information was available.
Two intelligence sources believe a FAB-500 air-dropped bomb was deployed, a 500-kilogram weapon manufactured by the Soviet Union and typically employed against military infrastructure. A similar bomb was used to destroy the maternity hospital in Mariupol the month prior, according to the chief of the national police of Ukraine.
Targeted was the traumatology department at Hospital No. 1, which comprised the intensive care unit where numerous patients were being treated. The personnel and patients were crowded in the basement.
Another structure, the Polyclinic, was severely destroyed. A large number of patients were relocated from other buildings in the location that had been damaged by previous, smaller shelling attacks recorded in the days prior.
It is unknown how many individuals were inside the structure. Several individuals who worked in the traumatology unit during the preceding weeks estimate that approximately fifty patients were present when the bomb was detonated. ITV News has not identified a single survivor.
“All floors and the basement were on fire, and the smoke was so thick that we were on the verge of suffocating,” said an eyewitness who witnessed the destruction from a neighboring building.
“There were numerously injured, wounded, unable-to-stand individuals, youngsters, and babies”.
The traumatology ward and other buildings are entirely damaged in satellite photographs collected after the attack and analyzed for this inquiry.
The Russian Investigative Committee didn’t disclose the video depicting the hospital’s destruction until April 20.
There is medical equipment among the rubble of the wrecked buildings. Russian officials said the damage was caused by the Ukrainian military.
Now that he has witnessed what transpired next, Dr. Hrankov Yelyzar admits that he battles to contain his insatiable desire to damage Russian soldiers.
“I am enraged, I never knew I could hate anyone as much as I detest Russians now,” he says to me from his new home in Dnipro, 200 miles from Mariupol.
“I truly detest them all. I have a strong want to murder and destroy their lives. I desire to do this. In that instant, though, I realize that I am a doctor”.
In an update to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Thursday, High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet stated that between February and the end of April, Mariupol was “perhaps the deadliest place in Ukraine”.
She informed the council that on March 10, just days after Moscow’s troops began closing in on Mariupol, the city was “surrounded” by Russian armed forces and allied armed organizations.
“All hospitals able to treat injured citizens have been damaged or destroyed, including the pediatric wards of hospital No. 3 in Mariupol,” stated the high commissioner.
By the end of March, hospitals had practically ceased to function due to damage, destruction, and the lack of electricity and medical supplies.
She stated that the destruction and damage to civilian property in Mariupol raise “severe concerns regarding compliance with international human rights law.
