Andriushchenko said that the process of reburying the dead has been complicated by Russian official insistence that reclaimed bodies be brought to a morgue and that a person claiming a body must agree to record a video in which the applicant says the deceased was killed by the Ukrainian military.

Read here Now Azovstal is in the hands of the occupier, – the wife of a fighter

Andriushchenko said that, based on the information gathered from his network of sources, Mariupol tonight is a city thrown back to the Middle Ages.

It is absolutely dark inside the city. The only lights are from Russian troops and Russian patrols, he said. Everywhere it’s the smell of death and the smell of fire.

The mayor's adviser said his contacts paint a picture of a city in the grips of a humanitarian catastrophe with very little contact to the outside world. Mobile phone connections are only just beginning to be re-established.