Mariupol mayor calls Russian siege ‘the new Auschwitz,’ says more than 5,000 civilians have been killed: Live Ukraine updates

The mayor of the encircled Ukrainian city of Mariupol said more than 5,000 civilians, including 210 children, have been killed during the monthlong Russian siege.

Vadym Boichenko said Wednesday that Russian forces bombed hospitals, including one where 50 people burned to death, and have destroyed more than 90% of the southern port city’s infrastructure.

“The world has not seen the scale of the tragedy in Mariupol since the existence of the Nazi concentration camps. Russia-occupation forces turned our entire city into a death camp,” Boichenko said, according to the Ukrainian news agency Interfax. “This is the new Auschwitz and Majdanek.”

Boichenko’s estimates of the fatalities in Mariupol come on the same day the U.S. imposed sweeping new sanctions on Russia that include targeting Vladimir Putin’s two adult daughters in response to atrocities in Ukraine that the White House has called war crimes.

Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, two daughters of the Russian leader and his ex-wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva Putina, face full blocking sanctions that will cut them off from the U.S. financial system and freeze any assets they may hold in the U.S. The administration believes many of Putin’s assets are hidden with family members.

Sanctions also target Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s wife and daughter. The new wave of sanctions on Russian elites add to the 140 other oligarchs and Kremlin officials already hit with sanctions since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

“We’re going to keep raising the economic costs and ratchet up the pain for Putin,” President Joe Biden said.