Russia’s invasion decimated Mariupol. Now it claims to be making the eastern Ukrainian city great again.
People walk past a fenced theatre building destroyed in the Russia-Ukraine war in Mariupol, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on Feb. 16.In the centre of Mariupol, an image of the Russian literary giant Leo Tolstoy stares down from a white fabric barricade that has been set up around the eastern Ukrainian city’s drama theatre.
“It’s like a feast during the time of plague,” said Maria Cheh, who used to live in Mariupol and fought to defend it as part of the Azov regiment. Russia vowed to build up areas it had spent weeks bombing and to make Mariupol, which it later dubbed a city of military glory, part of the motherland. For residents of Mariupol, Russian passports have become essential, as they are needed to access local services, including to apply for compensation for their destroyed homes.
In Mariupol, which was predominantly Russian-speaking before the invasion, criticism of the authorities can be met with swift and harsh punishment, just like in the rest of the occupied territories and in Russia itself. “They blamed us for putting bombs in the theatre and in the hospital,” she said referring to a maternity hospital that was hit by a Russian strike on March 9, 2022.
She was one of more than 2,400 Ukrainian fighters who spent months underground at the Azovstal steel plant and were forced to surrender after being encircled by Russia troops and running out of ammunition.She said she was held as a prisoner by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine for a year and was interrogated, beaten and tortured with electric shocks. She endured other abuse that she said she is not yet ready to talk about.
A Russian state flag flies above a road on the third day of a referendum on the joining of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic to Russia, in Mariupol on Sept. 25, 2022. Russian media reports have shown grateful families moving into newly constructed apartment blocks, complete with playgrounds out front.
“Many people at the moment live with friends, some in basements, some in derelict and destroyed buildings.” “It’s to show Russians and to show other parts of the world that: ‘We are rebuilding. It is our territory.’” Evgeny Petrov, who is from Krasnodar, Russia, a city 1,200 kilometres south of Moscow, created a YouTube channel where he publishes videos of Mariupol, including several where he is touring apartments with cracks in the ceilings, holes in the floor and poorly fitted doors that won’t open.
A screenshot from video taken by Anastasia Kozhevnikova and posted on May 18, 2023, shows the hospital construction in Mariupol. A promotional brochure for the building named House on Nakhimova describes an “elegant” building in a “neoclassical style” with 51 apartments and a playground designed by child psychologists.
In 2018, Ukrainian artist Sasha Korban created a mural on a 15-storey building called Milana for the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation. The six-year-old girl, Milana Abdurashytova, survived a missile attack by pro-Russian forces that killed her mother in 2015.
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