Full coverage: Erasing Mariupol
Full coverage: Erasing Mariupol
An explosion erupts from an apartment building at 110 Mytropolytska St., after a Russian army tank fired on it in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. A Russian attack has severely damaged a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A man runs after recovering items from a burning shop following a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
FILE - Damaged and burned buildings are seen from an open window of a new apartment block that is being built with support of the Russia Defense Ministry in Mariupol, in territory under control of the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic, in eastern Ukraine, Wednesday, July 13, 2022. This photo was taken during a trip organized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - Associated Press videographer Mstyslav Chernov reads news on his phone three days before the start of Russian invasion in Volnovakha, Ukraine, on Feb. 21, 2022. On the evening of Feb. 23, Chernov headed to Mariupol with colleague Evgeniy Maloletka. Chernov and Maloletka, two Ukrainians who documented the horrors of the Russian invasion and siege of Mariupol for The Associated Press, are being honored for their courage with Colby College’s Lovejoy Award. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)
FILE - Debris covers the inside of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre following a March 16, 2022, bombing in Mariupol, Ukraine, in an area now controlled by Russian forces, Monday, April 4, 2022. The bombing of the theater that was used as a shelter stands out as the single deadliest known attack against civilians to date in the war. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov, File)
People from Mariupol and eastern Ukraine disembark from a train at the railway station in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, Thursday, April 7, 2022, to be taken to temporary residences in the region. About 500 refugees from the Mariupol area arrived in Nizhny Novgorod on a special train organized by Russia from eastern Ukraine, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) from the border. (AP Photo)
Vladislav Zahorodnii looks on during an interview with The Associated Press at a clinic in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, June 17, 2022. Zahorodnii was evacuated from Azovstal by helicopter on March 31, after three failed earlier attempts. It was Zagorodniy’s first helicopter flight. The Mi-8 took fire on its way out, killing one of its engines. The other one kept them airborne for the remainder of the 80-minute early morning dash to Dnipro city on the Dnieper River in central Ukraine. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Olga Lopatkina embraces her adopted children in a park in Loue, western France, Saturday, July 2, 2022. After two months of negotiation and an initial objection from a senior Russian official, DPR authorities finally agreed to allow a volunteer with power of attorney from Lopatkina to collect her children who were evacuated from Mariupol. An Associated Press investigation has found that Russia’s strategy to take Ukrainian orphans and bring them up as Russian is well underway. (AP Photo/Jeremias Gonzalez)
Ukrainian military doctors treat their injured comrade which was evacuated from the battlefield at the hospital in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Monday, Jan. 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
An explosion erupts from an apartment building at 110 Mytropolytska St., after a Russian army tank fired on it in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
An explosion erupts from an apartment building at 110 Mytropolytska St., after a Russian army tank fired on it in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. A Russian attack has severely damaged a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. A Russian attack has severely damaged a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A man runs after recovering items from a burning shop following a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
A man runs after recovering items from a burning shop following a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
FILE - Damaged and burned buildings are seen from an open window of a new apartment block that is being built with support of the Russia Defense Ministry in Mariupol, in territory under control of the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic, in eastern Ukraine, Wednesday, July 13, 2022. This photo was taken during a trip organized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - Damaged and burned buildings are seen from an open window of a new apartment block that is being built with support of the Russia Defense Ministry in Mariupol, in territory under control of the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic, in eastern Ukraine, Wednesday, July 13, 2022. This photo was taken during a trip organized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - Associated Press videographer Mstyslav Chernov reads news on his phone three days before the start of Russian invasion in Volnovakha, Ukraine, on Feb. 21, 2022. On the evening of Feb. 23, Chernov headed to Mariupol with colleague Evgeniy Maloletka. Chernov and Maloletka, two Ukrainians who documented the horrors of the Russian invasion and siege of Mariupol for The Associated Press, are being honored for their courage with Colby College’s Lovejoy Award. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)
FILE - Associated Press videographer Mstyslav Chernov reads news on his phone three days before the start of Russian invasion in Volnovakha, Ukraine, on Feb. 21, 2022. On the evening of Feb. 23, Chernov headed to Mariupol with colleague Evgeniy Maloletka. Chernov and Maloletka, two Ukrainians who documented the horrors of the Russian invasion and siege of Mariupol for The Associated Press, are being honored for their courage with Colby College’s Lovejoy Award. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)
FILE - Debris covers the inside of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre following a March 16, 2022, bombing in Mariupol, Ukraine, in an area now controlled by Russian forces, Monday, April 4, 2022. The bombing of the theater that was used as a shelter stands out as the single deadliest known attack against civilians to date in the war. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov, File)
FILE - Debris covers the inside of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre following a March 16, 2022, bombing in Mariupol, Ukraine, in an area now controlled by Russian forces, Monday, April 4, 2022. The bombing of the theater that was used as a shelter stands out as the single deadliest known attack against civilians to date in the war. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov, File)
People from Mariupol and eastern Ukraine disembark from a train at the railway station in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, Thursday, April 7, 2022, to be taken to temporary residences in the region. About 500 refugees from the Mariupol area arrived in Nizhny Novgorod on a special train organized by Russia from eastern Ukraine, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) from the border. (AP Photo)
People from Mariupol and eastern Ukraine disembark from a train at the railway station in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, Thursday, April 7, 2022, to be taken to temporary residences in the region. About 500 refugees from the Mariupol area arrived in Nizhny Novgorod on a special train organized by Russia from eastern Ukraine, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) from the border. (AP Photo)
Vladislav Zahorodnii looks on during an interview with The Associated Press at a clinic in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, June 17, 2022. Zahorodnii was evacuated from Azovstal by helicopter on March 31, after three failed earlier attempts. It was Zagorodniy’s first helicopter flight. The Mi-8 took fire on its way out, killing one of its engines. The other one kept them airborne for the remainder of the 80-minute early morning dash to Dnipro city on the Dnieper River in central Ukraine. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Vladislav Zahorodnii looks on during an interview with The Associated Press at a clinic in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, June 17, 2022. Zahorodnii was evacuated from Azovstal by helicopter on March 31, after three failed earlier attempts. It was Zagorodniy’s first helicopter flight. The Mi-8 took fire on its way out, killing one of its engines. The other one kept them airborne for the remainder of the 80-minute early morning dash to Dnipro city on the Dnieper River in central Ukraine. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Olga Lopatkina embraces her adopted children in a park in Loue, western France, Saturday, July 2, 2022. After two months of negotiation and an initial objection from a senior Russian official, DPR authorities finally agreed to allow a volunteer with power of attorney from Lopatkina to collect her children who were evacuated from Mariupol. An Associated Press investigation has found that Russia’s strategy to take Ukrainian orphans and bring them up as Russian is well underway. (AP Photo/Jeremias Gonzalez)
Olga Lopatkina embraces her adopted children in a park in Loue, western France, Saturday, July 2, 2022. After two months of negotiation and an initial objection from a senior Russian official, DPR authorities finally agreed to allow a volunteer with power of attorney from Lopatkina to collect her children who were evacuated from Mariupol. An Associated Press investigation has found that Russia’s strategy to take Ukrainian orphans and bring them up as Russian is well underway. (AP Photo/Jeremias Gonzalez)
Ukrainian military doctors treat their injured comrade which was evacuated from the battlefield at the hospital in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Monday, Jan. 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Ukrainian military doctors treat their injured comrade which was evacuated from the battlefield at the hospital in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Monday, Jan. 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
The city of Mariupol came under siege by Russian troops for almost three months in 2022, and turned into a symbol for Ukrainian resistance and now also for Russian occupation. A team of three Associated Press reporters were the last international journalists to leave Mariupol, after almost three weeks of intense shelling.
Here is the story of Mariupol.
The bodies of the children all lie here, dumped into this narrow trench hastily dug into the frozen earth of Mariupol to the constant drumbeat of shelling. There’s 18-month-old Kirill, 16-year-old Iliya, the small girl who was among the first of Mariupol’s children to die in a Russian attack. Each airstrike and shell that relentlessly pounds Mariupol – about one a minute at times in recent days – drives home the curse of a geography that has put the city squarely in the path of Russia’s domination of Ukraine. In the more than two weeks since Russia’s war began, two AP journalists have been the only international media present in Mariupol, chronicling its fall into chaos and despair.
Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. A Russian attack has severely damaged a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. A Russian attack has severely damaged a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A team of Associated Press journalists were documenting the agony of Mariupol from inside the Ukrainian city when they learned their names were on a Russian list. AP video journalist Mstyslav Chernov tells the story of their rescue by Ukrainian soldiers as the Russian forces closed in on a hospital treating the wounded. Chernov and his colleague Evgeniy Maloletka escaped the city on March 15 and passed through 15 checkpoints. And the hospital? It’s been taken over by Russian soldiers.
FILE - Associated Press videographer Mstyslav Chernov reads news on his phone three days before the start of Russian invasion in Volnovakha, Ukraine, on Feb. 21, 2022. On the evening of Feb. 23, Chernov headed to Mariupol with colleague Evgeniy Maloletka. Chernov and Maloletka, two Ukrainians who documented the horrors of the Russian invasion and siege of Mariupol for The Associated Press, are being honored for their courage with Colby College’s Lovejoy Award. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)
FILE - Associated Press videographer Mstyslav Chernov reads news on his phone three days before the start of Russian invasion in Volnovakha, Ukraine, on Feb. 21, 2022. On the evening of Feb. 23, Chernov headed to Mariupol with colleague Evgeniy Maloletka. Chernov and Maloletka, two Ukrainians who documented the horrors of the Russian invasion and siege of Mariupol for The Associated Press, are being honored for their courage with Colby College’s Lovejoy Award. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)
A celebrated Ukrainian medic recorded her time in Mariupol on a data card no bigger than a thumbnail. Associated Press journalists smuggled it out to the world in a tampon. Yuliia Paievska is now in Russian hands, and Mariupol is on the edge of falling. Paievska is known in Ukraine as Taira. She used a body camera to record 256 gigabytes of her team’s frantic efforts over two weeks to bring people back from the brink of death. The footage shows her treating wounded Russian soldiers as well as Ukrainian civilians. The 53-year-old medic last was seen March 21 on Russian television as a captive, handcuffed and with bruises on her face.
Amid all the horrors that have unfolded in the war on Ukraine, the Russian airstrike on the theater being used as a bomb shelter in Mariupol on March 16 stands out as the single deadliest known attack against civilians to date. An Associated Press investigation has found evidence that the attack was far deadlier than estimated, killing closer to 600 people. That’s almost double the current estimates. The AP recreated what happened inside the theater on that day from the accounts of 23 survivors, rescuers, and people intimately familiar with the theater’s new life as a bomb shelter. The AP also built a 3D model based on witness accounts, two sets of floor plans of the theater, photos and video taken inside before, during and after that day, and expert comment.
Nearly 2 million Ukrainians refugees have been sent to Russia. Their journey starts not with a gun to the head, but with a poisoned choice: Die in Ukraine or live in Russia. Those who choose to live in Russia are then taken through a series of what are known as filtration points, where treatment ranges from interrogation and strip searches to being yanked aside and never seen again. Ukraine portrays these journeys as forced transfers to enemy ground, which is considered a war crime. Russia calls them humanitarian evacuations. An Associated Press investigation found that many refugees are indeed forced to embark on a surreal journey into Russia, subjected along the way to human rights abuses. It also found an underground network of Russians trying to help Ukrainians escape.
Olga Lopatkina embraces her adopted children in a park in Loue, western France, Saturday, July 2, 2022. After two months of negotiation and an initial objection from a senior Russian official, DPR authorities finally agreed to allow a volunteer with power of attorney from Lopatkina to collect her children who were evacuated from Mariupol. An Associated Press investigation has found that Russia’s strategy to take Ukrainian orphans and bring them up as Russian is well underway. (AP Photo/Jeremias Gonzalez)
Olga Lopatkina embraces her adopted children in a park in Loue, western France, Saturday, July 2, 2022. After two months of negotiation and an initial objection from a senior Russian official, DPR authorities finally agreed to allow a volunteer with power of attorney from Lopatkina to collect her children who were evacuated from Mariupol. An Associated Press investigation has found that Russia’s strategy to take Ukrainian orphans and bring them up as Russian is well underway. (AP Photo/Jeremias Gonzalez)
An Associated Press investigation found that Russia’s strategy to take Ukrainian orphans and bring them up as Russian is well underway. It’s one of the war’s most explosive issues. The investigation drew on dozens of interviews with parents, officials and children in Ukraine and Russia. It found that officials deported thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories without consent, lied to them that they were not wanted by their parents and gave them Russian families and citizenship. Experts say it is a strategy that can be traced up to senior Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin. They add that raising children of war in another country and culture can be a marker of genocide.
Throughout Mariupol, Russian workers are tearing down bombed-out buildings at a rate of at least one a day, hauling away shattered bodies with the debris. Russian soldiers, builders, administrators and doctors are replacing the thousands of Ukrainians who have died or left. Eight months after Mariupol fell into Russian hands, Russia is eradicating all vestiges of Ukraine from it. But it cannot hide the fact that it is building on death: The Associated Press found that more than 10,000 new graves already scar Mariupol. An AP investigation into occupied Mariupol drew on interviews with 30 residents, including 13 living under Russian occupation, satellite imagery, hundreds of videos gathered from inside the city, and Russian documents.
