Vienna Young people stroll through the city center, dance to street music and marvel at the wide range of market stalls: the videos and reports appearing on Russian portals these days show Mariupol as a city on the move, full of life and ready for the summer tourist season on the Azov River Sea.
“The city is awakening again,” says the correspondent for a Russian TV station close to the state, “the horror is now in the past.” But he can only hide it by zooming in on the people. As soon as entire rows of houses are in the picture, the mass of bombed-out ruins outweighs the individual new buildings. Mariupol was among the most contested cities in Ukraine. The city has been under Russian control since May 2022.
Residents and Russian volunteers only comment anonymously on the true state of affairs: “Mariupol feels like a city of ghosts,” Olga from St. Petersburg told the Russian subsidiary of Radio Free Europe. “Its atmosphere drains your energy.” A year after the fall of Mariupol, the scars of the brutal Russian siege are only superficially covered.
The attack on the port city begins on February 24, 2022: Russian troops are advancing from the Crimean peninsula in the southwest and from the Russian-occupied Donetsk region in the east. They largely cut the city off from supplies.
The Russian army shelled Mariupol hard: on March 9, shells hit a maternity clinic, and a week later the city theater. Thousands die in these weeks. On March 17, the Russians encircle the city. The residents live without running water, electricity and heating. Safe escape routes exist almost exclusively to Russia. However, most of the residents leave Mariupol.
Long struggle for the Azovstal steel mill
Russian troops are gradually penetrating the city and pushing back the Ukrainian defenders to the vast area of Azovstal Steel Works. At times, 1,000 civilians also hold out in the tunnels.
>> Read here: Scholz guarantees continued German support to Selenski
Russians gain control of the city, except for Azovstal. On April 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin orders its closure. Luftwaffe, artillery and battleships completely destroy the plant.
On May 16, 2022, the defenders surrender. The remaining 1,700 Ukrainian soldiers are taken prisoner by the Russians. After an 86-day siege, Mariupol falls to the Russians. They are thus securing the land bridge to Crimea, which was denied to them by Ukrainian resistance after the annexation of the peninsula in 2014.
Moscow is celebrating a rare success in a war that has long been marked by setbacks for the Russian side. In November, Putin gave Mariupol the honorary title of “City of War Glory” to underline its political importance.
Only by surrendering did the Ukrainian defenders in the Azov valley escape certain death.
(Photo: Reuters)
Mariupol also continues to be of great importance to the Ukrainians. As the central symbol of the defensive struggle, the Ukrainians have named the lost metropolis a “hero city”. The fate of the Azovstal fighters is particularly emotional for Ukrainians.
The dead were buried anonymously in gardens and parks
The pictures of the wounded men from the steelworks contributed to this. In the spring of 2022, their rescue from death occupied the political levels of both warring parties: As CNN recently revealed, the capitulation was the result of secret negotiations between representatives of the Russian and Ukrainian military intelligence services.
Many of the defenders were taken to the Olenivka POW camp. An explosion at the camp in July 2022 kills more than 50 Azov militants. Moscow accuses Kiev of being behind the attack. The Russians prevent an independent investigation.
Family members and NGOs are using protests and interventions to keep the pressure on Kiev to free the fighters. Several hundred have returned over the past year as part of a prisoner exchange, although the Russians generally regard the members of the Azov battalion, some of whom come from the right-wing extremist milieu, as “Nazis”. The survivors report systematic abuse.
>> Read here: These satellite images show the catastrophic extent of the destruction in Mariupol
After occupying Mariupol, Russia covers up the massacres of civilians. Ukrainian estimates place 25,000 civilians killed during the siege. Moscow claims Russian shelling left no casualties and blames Ukrainians for killing 3,000 people.
In the city today, independent reporting is impossible. Satellite images from the Maxar company provide information: Based on them, the BBC has counted 4,600 new graves since February 2022 in the Stari Krim cemetery alone. The AP news agency assumes that there will be more than 10,000 new burial sites in various locations.
Russia targeted civilians and children
However, not all victims were buried: During the siege, the rescuers were overwhelmed with the life-threatening salvage. “On the worst days, 100 to 150 bodies had to be collected,” an eyewitness told the BBC. The dead were therefore often buried makeshiftly in gardens and parks.
>> Read here: Life in Kharkiv after the Russian occupation: “Not even looters dare come here”
The Russians have since reburied many of them. However, pictures of the cemeteries show that most of the victims remain unidentified. No one knows how many people were left lying in the rubble of their homes. This uncertainty also affects what is arguably the worst war crime in the city: the shelling of the theater marked as a shelter for civilians and children on March 16, 2022.
Research by the AP and Amnesty International concluded that the bombing was deliberate. While AP estimates the number of deaths at up to 600, Amnesty International estimates the number to be much lower: the organization has identified a dozen victims, “but it is likely that many more have gone unreported.” Both investigations are based on eyewitness reports, which, however, gave different information about the number of people seeking protection on the day of the attack.
During the reconstruction, Moscow is not only removing the traces of fighting and atrocities, but also those of the Ukrainian identity: the largely demolished theater is to be renamed the “Russian Theater”, and the sign at the entrance to the town now bears the Russian tricolor. Streets are given back Soviet names, curricula have been Russified, Ukrainian monuments removed.
Tens of thousands of people still live in ruined houses. New buildings are rare and are not awarded by the occupation authorities in a transparent manner.
(Photo: IMAGO/SNA)
The population is also Russified. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, the fighting has displaced 350,000 of the once 425,000 residents. Some were abducted on suspicion of Ukrainian “nationalism” or given up children illegally for adoption. In their place, soldiers, officials and construction workers from Russia came to Mariupol.
Few apartments as leverage
Estimates of the current population vary widely. The Ukrainians speak of 90,000, the occupation authorities of 230,000 and tens of thousands of workers and soldiers.
There are doubts about the latter figure, because there is simply no housing available for so many people. According to the UN, the fighting damaged 90 percent of all residential buildings. 50,000 houses have to be demolished. Last week, a representative of the occupation authorities announced that 2,700 apartments had been opened and 37 new houses had been built. If this number is correct, they would offer accommodation for around 10,000 people.
>> Read here: Putin visits occupied Ukrainian territory for the first time since the beginning of the war
The most important prestige project is the Nevsky Quarter, named after its “sister city” St. Petersburg. This also covers the costs of reconstruction, which independent sources estimate at the equivalent of up to 18 billion. There are no official figures. It is this neighborhood of brightly colored apartment buildings that Putin visited in March.
The President met residents there who thanked him for being allowed to live in this “little piece of paradise”. According to Russian media, those who receive apartments for free whose houses were destroyed.
The news portal “Wjorstka” has gained access to internal chats of residents reporting several cases of evictions. These are officially justified by formal errors.
But it stands to reason that the extreme shortage of apartments leads to covetousness in a city where people live in half-ruined houses and basements. This is another leverage for the new authorities: they reward those who are most loyal to the construction of the new, “Russian” Mariupol.
More: Britain pledges hundreds of combat drones to Ukraine