This was stated by Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov during the United News national telethon.
"The occupiers are trying to find those people who are resisting, and today more than 500 civilians of Melitopol are in the torture chambers of the Ruscists," he said.
The mayor also added that after each explosion, Russian forces intensify “filtration” measures and this filtration is extremely strict.
"These are searches, imprisonment, torture, and abuse," Fedorov said.
The mayor noted that the number of Russian troops is growing, they have entered Melitopol and Vesele. They are forbidding people to leave their homes and imposing curfews. According to Fedorov, this is done to prevent people from seeing the movement of Russian military equipment and to prevent them from passing this information to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
In March, the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, said that Russian forces were preparing to hold pseudo-elections in the temporarily occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia region.
According to British intelligence analysts, Russians "quietly" declared that Melitopol had become the center of the occupied territory of the region, recognizing that the troops were unlikely to be able to capture the planned targets.