Russian troops occupying the port city of Mariupol plan to dress Ukrainian “prisoners of war” in military uniforms as part of a “grotesque” parade to coincide with celebrations of Russia’s Victory Day on May 9, an aide to the city’s mayor said.
In a post on his Telegram channel, Petro Andriushchenko, adviser to the Mariupol mayor, said city officials had received information that nearly 2,000 men are currently being held in so-called “filtration camps.”
Ukrainian officials have described the camps in the southern Ukrainian city as facilities where Russian forces detain captured citizens before sending them to remote Russian locations. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has compared them to Nazi concentration camps from World War II.
Andriushchenko said the men were taken from the villages of Bezimenne and Kozatske almost four weeks ago.
“These men are being held there and told they will be forced to carry the Ukrainian [military] Wearing uniform and taking part in a so-called “prisoner of war parade” in Mariupol because they [the Russians] there is a lack of real prisoners of war,” said the adviser.
“It will be a grotesque crowd scene for another propaganda image,” he added.
He also said that the Russians were preparing to celebrate Victory Day on May 9 in the devastated Ukrainian city. Victory Day is a highly symbolic day for the Kremlin, commemorating the end of World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War.
Russian city officials visited on Wednesday and installed a “scarecrow of a woman with a flag,” he claimed.
Preparations for this “obscurantism” are underway, Andriushchenko added.
“Parade on Bones”
Russian forces are also working to clear debris around the city for the event, which he described as a “parade on the bones of Mariupol’s citizens.”
Local residents were forced to help clear debris in exchange for food, he claimed.
“Work against food: This is the best illustration of the occupier’s ‘victory’,” he wrote.
“The occupiers continue to dismantle the rubble in the city center, including the drama theater, in preparation for the parade,” the adviser said.
Also, Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Service said on Wednesday that the Kremlin intends to turn the city into a center of “celebrations” on Victory Day.
“To that end, the city is urgently clearing the central streets of debris, the bodies of those killed and duds,” the agency said.
Newsweek has not been able to independently verify the claims.
The reports come amid mounting speculation by Western officials that Russian President Vladimir Putin could use Victory Day to declare an all-out war on Ukraine. The Kremlin has called such proposals “nonsense.”
Russian forces stepped up attacks on Mariupol after failing to take Kyiv in the first weeks of Putin’s invasion. About 200 civilians are believed to be trapped in the Azovstal steelworks.
Mariupol is a strategic port city on the Sea of Azov that would provide a land corridor to Crimea, which the Kremlin annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday lashed out at Russian claims that Mariupol is fully under Russian control.
“Azovstal, the fortress, the last stronghold of the Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol, is still holding,” he said.
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment.
A woman holds and kisses a child next to Russian soldiers on a street of Mariupol April 12, 2022 as Russian troops step up a campaign to capture the strategic port city, part of an expected massive attack on eastern Ukraine. ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images