Ukrainian reports of an alleged targeted attack by Russian troops on a maternity clinic in Mariupol have sparked global outrage. Moscow firmly disagrees with this account.
News from the war is often terrible, but the Russian attack on the building of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol caused great international outrage.
“There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and helpless,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted on Wednesday evening. US President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, spoke of the “barbaric use of military force against civilians”. Moscow firmly rejects the Ukrainian account as a hoax.
The building was apparently shot at on Wednesday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported 3 civilians killed and 17 injured.
Russia denies
Russia had already informed the United Nations on March 7 that there were no longer any medical staff in the former clinic, but a camp of ultra-radical fighters from the Ukrainian battalion Azov, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday in Antalya after talks with his Ukrainian colleague Dmytro Kuleba. He spoke of a “manipulation” of the entire world with information on alleged atrocities by the Russian army.
Selenskyj rejected Lavrov’s allegations: “The Russians were lied to (on television) by saying that there were allegedly no patients in the hospital and no women and children in the birthing center,” said the head of state in a video message. It’s all a “lie”.
In fact, Russia’s UN ambassador Vasily Nebensya said on Monday before the UN Security Council with regard to Mariupol: “We are noticing that the Ukrainian radicals are showing their true colors more and more every day. Local residents say they expelled staff from a maternity hospital and then set up a shooting range in that hospital.”
UN chief condemns attack
To Moscow’s annoyance, UN Secretary-General António Guterres tweeted on Wednesday: “Today’s attack on a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, where maternity and children’s wards are located, is appalling.” The United Nations stayed with this presentation on Thursday: The information for Guterres’ tweet was based on the UN’s own information, said spokesman Stephane Dujarric of the German Press Agency. “We stand by what we said.”
The Kremlin in Moscow announced an investigation. “We will ask our military because we do not have precise information about what happened there,” said spokesman Dmitry Peskov. And Foreign Minister Lavrov claimed: “In this maternity hospital (…) there have been no women, no children, no nurses for a long time.”
Images spread on social media
Meanwhile, two pictures in particular are circulating on social networks: one shows a heavily pregnant woman on a staircase full of rubble, she is wearing a polka-dot jogging suit, a teddy bear is sewn on the chest area, and there is blood on her face. The second picture shows an apparently also pregnant woman being carried through rubble on a stretcher.
According to the Ukrainian representation, both recordings come from the area of the affected maternity home. A pressure wave is said to have destroyed windows, furniture and doors. President Selenskyj himself published a video on Wednesday evening that is said to show the completely devastated rooms of the clinic. “People, children are under the rubble,” Zelenskyj wrote.
Mariupol under siege for days
The different information provided by both sides could not initially be verified independently. The strategically important port city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea has been besieged by Russian troops for several days. Recently, several attempts to evacuate civilians have failed. According to observers, the humanitarian situation is catastrophic.
It is feared that the situation in Mariupol as a result of the Russian siege could ultimately become as dramatic as it was in the Chechen capital of Grozny and in the Syrian city of Aleppo. “I think what you will find in Mariupol when the war is over will be terrible,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said recently. The head of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, has already drawn parallels with Aleppo and Grozny.
Despite repeated assurances from Moscow that it would not target civilians, Mariupol reported renewed shelling of residential areas on Thursday. According to local authorities, several bombs were dropped. That too could not be verified at first. “The destruction is enormous,” said the Mariupol City Council.
UN Human Rights Office: 549 civilians killed
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights documented the deaths of 549 civilians in Ukraine since the Russian invasion on February 24 and up to 00:00 on Wednesday. The day before there were 516. Among them were 41 minors, as reported by the Geneva office. The office also had verified information about 957 injured people. The day before it was 908.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, always emphasizes that the actual numbers are certainly much higher. Employees often need days to check the number of victims. The High Commissioner only reports death and injury figures that it has independently verified itself.
Source: Stern
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