Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 14/03/2022
For days, the civilian population in the besieged city of Mariupol is under intense Russian attacks. Efforts to open humanitarian corridors for their evacuation attract media attention and are also the subject of disinformation narratives.
The war between Ukraine and Russia began on February 24, 2022, when Russia attacked several Ukrainian cities. One of the cities under intense attacks by Russian forces is Mariupol, a port city in southeastern Ukraine. The continuous bombing of this city resulted in civilian casualties and significant damage to infrastructure, and Ukrainian official sources claim that the city is besieged. Local authorities in Mariupol have warned that the city is close to a “humanitarian catastrophe” due to intense Russian attacks.
As BBC explains, the city is extremely important to the Russian military “because capturing it would allow separatist forces backed by Russia in eastern Ukraine to join forces with troops in Crimea, the southern peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014”. There are about 400,000 inhabitants in Mariupol, a significant part of which is awaiting evacuation. Some media published disinformation related to the efforts to evacuate the civilian population from this city.
Whose army does not allow civilians to leave Mariupol?
On February 28, 2022, the website of Sputnik Serbia published an article on the situation in Mariupol. The article states, among other things, the following:
DNR: Ukrainian troops mined Mariupol, the issue of liberating the city will be resolved in negotiations
It is still premature to talk about the liberation of Mariupol – a unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which is withdrawing from the front line, bombing the city and not letting residents get out of it, said the spokesman of the DNR People’s Militia, Eduard Basurin.
(…)
According to him, Ukrainian soldiers are holding civilians hostage because they are “afraid to answer for the crimes they committed against the population not only of Donbas, but also of Ukraine”.
The same allegations were published on the website of the Radio Television of the Republic of Srpska on February 28, 2022.
None of the above-mentioned articles provide evidence for any of these claims. The claim that the Ukrainian troops “mined” Mariupol came, as it is stated, from the spokesperson of the paramilitary formation of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), but it was not published by any credible source.
In the analysis from March 3, 2022, the Ukrainian fact-checking portal StopFake dealt with the claim that the Ukrainian forces are not releasing the residents of Mariupol and that they are “holding them hostage”. According to StopFake,” the Russian army is causing a humanitarian catastrophe in Mariupol, deliberately shelling civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, apartment buildings, and schools. For example, on March 2, the maternity hospital in Mariupol was under enemy fire”. As StopFake points out, Mariupol City Council says that Russian forces do not let food into the city.
As reported in the Washington Post article on March 5, 2022, the Ukrainian side is working intensively on evacuating civilians from Mariupol.
Has the Russian paramilitary formation opened safe evacuation corridors earlier?
Another claim published without official confirmations and evidence suggests that the self-proclaimed DNR allegedly opened two corridors for the evacuation of people from Mariupol on March 1, and gave them a deadline of March 2, 2022, to leave the city. This claim was initially published on the website Sputnik on March 1, 2022, in an article stating the following:
DNR: A corridor for leaving besieged Mariupol is open until March 2
DNR forces are proposing that the residents of besieged Mariupol leave the city along two special corridors by March 2.
We guarantee the safety of movement on the sections of the E58 highway, in the directions towards Zaporizhzhia and towards the territory of Russia, said the spokesman of the People’s Militia of the DNR, Eduard Basurin.
(…)
Basurin warned that the Security Service of Ukraine and the Azov Battalion are preparing provocations against Russian units in Mariupol, Horlivka, and Donetsk.
“SBU officials, together with the Azov and National Guards, decided to make a provocation against the Russian Federation. How? They change into the uniforms of the Russian army, the uniforms of our soldiers, our republic, and kill civilians. You can imagine what the news will be like all over the world”, Basurin said.
Allegations that the Ukrainian army is planning or carrying out the mentioned “provocations” have not been proven in any way. It is stated that one of the open corridors led to the territory of Russia, the country that launched the attack due to which civilians need to be evacuated. The claim that these two corridors are open and safe for civilians was not published by any credible source, nor were they reported by credible world media. Official Ukrainian sources also did not call for the evacuation of civilians through these corridors.
Ukrainian StopFake also dealt with this claim in the analysis from March 1, 2022. According to them, “the City Council of Mariupol denied that the evacuation of the inhabitants of certain areas is being prepared”. According to the statement of the city council, the claims about the existence of such corridors of the DNR “can be a preparation for a great sabotage”.
Thus, the City Council of Mariupol denied the allegations of the self-proclaimed DNR about the existence of humanitarian corridors through which the population could be evacuated. In addition, they warned of the potential danger of using such “corridors”.
Previous evacuation attempts and why they failed
The first attempt to evacuate civilians from Mariupol took place on March 5. The attempt followed an agreement between Russia and Ukraine on March 4, 2022, on a temporary ceasefire to establish humanitarian corridors in certain areas. However, the attempt failed, and both sides accused the other of violating the agreement. Mariupol Deputy Mayor Serhiy Orlov pointed out that Russian forces are continuing attacks on Mariupol and that the corridors are still not safe for civilians. On the other hand, Russia repeated the previously mentioned allegations that “nationalists” in Ukraine do not release civilians from the city.
The civilian population tried to evacuate again a day later, on March 6. The attempt failed once again. An article about this evacuation attempt was published on the website Pravda on March 6, 2022, claiming that members of the Azov Battalion shot at a column of civilians, allegedly killing two and wounding four civilians. This article is entitled:
WAR CRIME IN MARIUPOL: Members of “Azov” killed civilians in the humanitarian corridor
In this case, the source that Pravda cites for its claims is the People’s Militia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. However, there is no evidence to confirm that the Azov Battalion’s Ukrainian army fired on civilians. According to the Kyiv Independent, the evacuation attempt was suspended because the Russian side did not abide by the ceasefire agreement. The same is claimed in the article by Deutsche Welle from March 6, 2022.
On March 6, 2022, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) pointed out in a statement published on the social network Twitter that the attempt failed, and as they claim, “failed attempts emphasize the absence of a detailed and functional agreement between the parties to the conflict”.
Allegations of killing and wounding of civilians in the humanitarian corridor, for which the Ukrainian battalion Azov is allegedly responsible, were not published by any official source. These claims have not been confirmed by international organizations operating in Ukraine, nor have credible media written about them.
After two failed attempts to evacuate the civilian population from Mariupol, Russia, on March 7. offered humanitarian evacuation corridors leading to Russia and its ally Belarus. A spokesman for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the proposal “completely immoral”.
According to the Associated Press in an article from March 9, 2022, another evacuation attempt failed the day before. Ukrainian officials accused Russia of firing on a convoy carrying aid to civilians in Mariupol before it reached the city.
So, at the time of writing this analysis, the civilian population is still in Mariupol, a city surrounded by very intense fighting and which is under almost constant bombing by Russian forces. More than 2,000 people were killed in attacks on the city, according to Al Jazeera’s article from March 14. Humanitarian corridors, which would evacuate the population from the city, are currently the only way for them to leave, but attempts to establish them have repeatedly failed. The Russian side has misinformed the public about these corridors several times, and some domestic media have reported such claims without any evidence of their validity.
According to the facts, the claims that the Ukrainian army “mines” Mariupol, holds civilians hostage and does not release them from the city, initially published on the website Sputnik, are assessed as fake news.
We assess the claims that the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk opened corridors for evacuation of Mariupol residents as manipulation of facts since there is no official confirmation of these allegations, nor have Ukrainian official sources called for evacuation through such corridors.
We give the rating of fake news to the claim suggesting that members of the Azov battalion “killed civilians in the humanitarian corridor”, published in the headline of the website Pravda. The claims from the article were exaggerated, and they were not confirmed.
Lastly, we evaluate the articles containing the claim given by the People’s Militia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic suggesting that the corridor of civilians was attacked, which resulted in killing two and wounding four civilians, as manipulation of facts, since there are no independent confirmations of this allegation.