True or propaganda?

[Bob Juch]

From the LA Times:

Mariupol officials accused Russian forces of kidnapping several thousand local residents and transporting them against their will to “remote cities in Russia.”

“What the occupiers are doing today is familiar to the older generation, who saw the horrific events of World War II, when the Nazis forcibly captured people,” Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said in a post on Telegram.

The reports of forced removals could not be independently verified. Russia has not responded to the allegations, although Russian state media have reported that buses filled with what they described as refugees have been arriving from Ukraine in recent days.

Few journalists have been able to enter Mariupol, where fighting has been raging between Russian forces and Ukrainian defenders, and communication lines have largely been severed.

The port city of some 400,000 on the Sea of Azov in southeastern Ukraine has become a vivid symbol of the devastation wrought by the war, with officials reporting that 90% of the city’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed.

Still, even amid reports of widespread destruction in Mariupol, there were growing signs that Moscow’s apparent hopes for a quick war and rapid Ukrainian capitulation have faded against unexpectedly fierce resistance and what many call miscalculations and missteps by Russian military planners.