Google Maps makes devastating update to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol

Google Maps has been updated with new images showing the toll war has taken on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

The site’s devastating latest update shows it transformed from a bustling port to a heavily bombed site.

Some photos of the city have reportedly not been updated in three years, which makes the contrast even more stark. Twitter users have been sharing satellite images, now occupied by Russian forces, after noticing the updates this week.

Mariupol was one of the first sites to be targeted by Russian forces when the invasion began in February 2022.

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The city was surrendered in May last year, with Ukrainian officials claiming that more than 20,000 civilians had been killed.

One of the most devastating incidents came when a theatre being used as a bomb shelter which had the word “children” written on the ground outside it was destroyed in Russian air strikes. Around 600 people died after the attack.

Russia’s defence ministry swiftly denied it carried out the assault last year, according to the RIA news agency. Instead it accused the Azov Battalion, a far-right Ukrainian militia, of blowing it up without giving any evidence to back up the claim.

The scale of the death and suffering in the city was made clear last year, when a viral video of mass graveyards was seen by many online.

The two minute clip shows footage that appears to have been taken from a car driving through unnamed graves in the city.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin appeared to be heckled by a Mariupol resident during his visit to the annexed city on Sunday (19 March).

According to The Telegraph, as the president of Russia met with supposedly grateful Ukrainians, a woman can be heard shouting: “It’s all lies, it’s all just for show.”

In the footage, which was broadcast on television, Putin’s security team appear to begin frantically looking around to try and locate the disturbance.

The president was meeting residents of a reconstructed apartment block, with one of those he spoke to describing Mariupol as “paradise”.

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