Bodies left to rot on supermarket floor

RUSSIAN soldiers have dumped the bodies of dozens of civilians in a supermarket in Mariupol and left them to rot.

The corpses were washed above ground by Russia’s attempts to restore running water to the ruined city, according to an adviser to the mayor.

Photographs from the Shchyryi Kum supermarket, which are too graphic to publish, show decomposing and discoloured bodies in civilian clothes littered across the floor.

Petro Andryushchenko, the Mariupol mayor’s adviser, said that so many bodies were being washed out of the ground Russia was unable to bury them.

“The Russians are bringing the bodies of the dead here [in the supermarket], bodies which were washed out of graves and partially exhumed in an attempt to restore water supply,” Mr Andryushchenko said on his Telegram channel.

“They are just dumping them like garbage.”

He claimed that Russia had launched a campaign to recruit grave diggers and pathologists.

“There is a catastrophic shortage of people to bury the corpses and of power for even makeshift mortuaries,” he said. “A recruitment campaign for pathologists has been launched in Moscow.”

Russia shelled Mariupol from the end of February.

Before the war Mariupol had a population of around 500,000 and was famed for its relaxed vibe and beaches along the Sea of Azov. Now it has become a byword for Russian military destruction, alongside Grozny and

‘The Russians are bringing the bodies of the dead to the supermarket ... They are just dumping them like garbage’

Aleppo. The Kremlin has showcased its capture of Mariupol as a big victory, hosting May Day parades and talking it up as a strategic success.

Western officials have said that the bombing of Mariupol is a war crime and that as many as 22,000 civilians were killed. Many were hastily buried in shallow graves by friends, neighbours and volunteers before the Russians captured the city. It is these bodies that Mr Andryushchenko said were now being washed out of the ground.