‘It could have been me’: Mariupol residents grieve loved ones killed by Russian attacks

The Ukrainian city of 400,000 people has been almost completely flattened by prolonged Russian bombardment aimed at breaking the resistance of the city's defenders.

Viktoria has just buried her stepfather Leonid after the car ferrying him to a hospital was blown up during fierce fighting in Mariupol, the port city in southeast Ukraine that has become the main focal point of the month-long war.

Holding back tears, the 46-year-old factory worker described how Leonid, 73, had got injured and was being escorted to the hospital for treatment with a doctor when they and an unknown third man in the car were blown up.

“This guy had taken a seat instead of me and then they all got blown up in that car,” she said, pointing to the vehicle nearby, now just a mangled mass of twisted metal.

“It could have been me,” she sobbed, after planting a small wooden cross on the makeshift grave. It was one of many dug out of a grassy verge near charred apartment blocks.

The incident happened on March 12, but Viktoria’s son and his friend were only now able to bury Leonid as temperatures slowly rise and the earth thaws.

“It has got warmer and we could bury him… Of course, later we plan to rebury him. That’s all we can do for now,” she said.

It is a grimly familiar story in Mariupol, once a city of 400,000 people that has been almost completely flattened by prolonged Russian bombardment aimed at breaking the resistance of the city’s Ukrainian defenders.