Almost fully destroyed by the Russians, Mariupol has been under occupation for a year. The Ukrainian information space receives little reports about the life of its inhabitants and the functioning of the infrastructure. However, we can see that Russia is trying to paint a picture of the “reconstruction” in the city. On the bones.
How Mariupol lives and breathes, and why the invaders invest in the reconstruction of the destroyed city and create conditions for Russians to move into the occupied territory — Civil Network OPORA was looking for answers to these questions.
How Many People Were Killed And How Many Remained in Mariupol
Mariupol is a Ukrainian city that suffered by far the greatest destruction at the very beginning of the Russian aggression. As in the case of Izium, Severodonetsk, Bakhmut and other cities, in February-May 2022, in Mariupol the occupiers used their favorite “scorched earth tactics.” It is about seizing the settlement at any cost, even through the deliberate destruction of critical infrastructure and residential buildings.
In the end, the city that has been actively developing for the past eight years before the full-scale war and became a “showcase for the restoration of Donbas”, was almost fully destroyed.
Now, it is hard to definitively say how many people stay in Mariupol. Before the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion, almost 430,000 people used to live here. Now, according to the adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andryushchenko, there are about 90,000 residents left in the city, of whom 65,000 are pensioners. Others either either became refugees (about 350,000 people), or were killed.
Petro Andryushchenko says that no one knows the precise number of those killed during the Russian assault. According to the Mariupol City Council, since the beginning of the occupation, at least 25,000 people have been buried in the identified cemeteries and mass graves.
Earlier, journalist Natalia Dedova (a wife of Viktor Dedov who was killed in Mariupol in March 2022) said that as of August 2022, the temporarily occupied Mariupol had data on 87,000 dead, who at the time of death had a passport or any kind of certificate.
However, according to Andryushchenko, the real number of victims can be found out only after the city’s de-occupation. The scale of the catastrophe in the city is not yet fully comprehended. Now we are traumatized and continue to suffer inhuman blows from the aggressor.
How Much Housing Survived And Where People Now Live In Mariupol
According to the mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russian invaders have damaged 2,208 apartment buildings. Of these, 50% (which is more than 1,100 houses) were destroyed. “Now they are demolishing them, leaving pits and piles of stones. 282 high-rise buildings have already been dismantled, and the occupiers plan to demolish about 700 houses,” said the mayor.
Petro Andryushchenko says that the occupiers started a special register of houses subject to demolition. It included 956 buildings. It is approximately 43% of the housing stock. “But the Russians have now stopped the dismantling on a global scale, compared to what it used to be before. Initially, they demolished about one high-rise building per day, and now the pace has slowed down. Now they demolish one house a week,” says Andryushchenko.
77 Metallurhiv Str. This house is already under demolishement. Мариуполь сейчас /Telegram
Petro Andriushchenko explains: the housing that was supposed to be dismantled is now being transferred to the status of repairable housing. In his opinion, it is because the funds from Russia’s federal budget allocated for the construction of new houses have been plundered, while they still need to report the outcomes.
“The occupiers began their strange “repair works.” They would cut one block in the middle of the building and say that it had been there. But we understand that from the point of view of maintaining the strength of the structure, it is not good. Or, they may cut a piece of an apartment in a panel house and finish it with bricks, “ the mayor’s adviser said.
As for the intact housing, according to Petro Andryushchenko, about 10% of the undamaged housing stock remained in the city. “The 17th and 23rd districts in Mariupol suffered the least damage. Those are the outskirts of the city. The invaders were entering there from the villages of Nikolske and Staryi Krym (north-western part of the city). There, they moved quickly, so the destruction was insignificant. At least these areas have the surviving high-rise buildings, and there are many of them, compared to other parts of the city,” said Andryushchenko.
27 Metallurhiv Str. Construction works. Мариуполь сейчас /Telegram
These houses are actually inhabited by people still staying in Mariupol. Petro Andryushchenko explains that many apartment owners have left, and some died. “The apartments stayed behind, and people began to settle there. The scenarios were different. There were also cases of squatting, and situations when family members or acquaintances who left gave their permissions to live in their apartments. Therefore, people settled in the surviving apartments mostly on their own, without any engagement of the occupation authorities, ”he comments.
According to Petro Andryushchenko, some people live in destroyed houses. Most of them are pensioners who are difficult to convince to leave their homes as they wish to preserve the surviving material values. They are also marginal groups of the population who are happy with such living.
Who’s Going to be Russia’s Cat’s Paws to “Rebuild” Mariupol
Today, the population of the city keeps growing. There are cases when Mariupol residents return to the city after they evacuated during the hostilities. The reasons are different: some people have their houses intact, others could not fulfil themselves in the free territory of Ukraine, or abroad.
However, the main group of people who are now moving to Mariupol are workers from Central Asian countries (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, or Kyrgyzstan). In Russia itself, these people are often called “new Russians” because some time after moving they receive the citizenship of the aggressor country. Also, the Russians assigned to them a disgraceful cliché of “Gastarbeiters”, since many of these immigrants work in construction.
This is what the bus station in Mariupol looks like Мариуполь сейчас/Telegram
According to Petro Andryushchenko, at the beginning of Mayб 40 to 50 thousand “new Russians” moved to Mariupol to live and work. They also bring their families along. In general, according to our interlocutor, in the near future this number may increase to at least 80,000. The trend can be explained by the fact that Russia, in order to gain a foothold in the occupied territories and hide their war crimes, wants to turn the destroyed city into a “Russian showcase” of the Donbas, and to assimilate it. To do this, Moscow has already drawn lots for 40 subcontracts for large buildings in the city, and identified the sites for it. “Contracts were awarded to companies owned by people close to the Kremlin. They plan to build residential buildings at the expense of the federal budget. Therefore, the number of workers from Russia will increase,” says Andryushchenko.
The adviser to the mayor adds that, other than Mariupol, which the Russians see as the center of the Azov agglomeration, the occupiers do not plan to invest in other cities of Donetsk region captured in 2014 — Donetsk, Horlivka or Makiivka. In their opinion, these cities do not have infrastructure and economic potential, so it is pointless to invest in them. If their residents strive for a better life, they will be able to move elsewhere, such as to Mariupol. Meanwhile, the surviving shops of the metallurgical plant in Makiivka and other places cast reinforcement rods for new skyscrapers in Mariupol, day and night.
However, it is a matter of longer-term Russian plans. Now Russia is creating favorable conditions for its citizens, primarily from Central Asian countries, to go to live and work in Mariupol. It is practically a destroyed city located not so far from the front line catching the strikes from time to time. They hit wither warehouses with ammunition, or the sites of location and concentration of occupation troops.
In Mariupol, Russia is building the Nakhimov Naval School Мариуполь сейчас/Telegram
Yes, Russia offers high wages. According to Petro Andryushchenko, the minimum wage for Russians in Mariupol is 150,000 rubles (68,000 hryvnias), and the average is 230,000 rubles (105,000 hryvnias). This is much more than they could earn elsewhere in Russia. In addition, according to our interviewee, these funds are sky-high, as compared to the 30,000 rubles (almost 14,000 hryvnias) of wages, which Mariupol residents can rely on today.
Such financial inequality, according to another of our interlocutors, the President of “Mariupol television” Mykola Osychenko, instigates the superior attitude of immigrants from Central Asia to Mariupol citizens. They treat them as the second or third-class people. After all, most of them are on the edge of subsistence: the city has crazy unemployment rates, and social benefits are not as good as Russian propaganda says. For example, the so-called pensions (which are essentially social benefits) are from 10 to 12 thousand rubles (4,600-5,500 hryvnia), but even those amounts are paid with interruptions. Besides, it is also extremely hard to live a normal life with these funds. Prices in stores are high, as they are rather targeting the visiting Russians.
At the same time, Russian propaganda spreads misinformation about Ukraine, incites hatred, fear, mistrust, and social tension between Ukrainians staying in Mariupol. According to Mykola Osychenko, a key idea boils down to the following message: people who fled the city are “traitors” and “Gastarbeiters,” and those who stayed are the real “patriots” who had not abandoned their city.
They do it to make sure people accept the new reality, whether they like it or not. They should rejoice in the stabilization of the situation and normal life. At the same time, the starting point of “normality” is not what was the city used to be before February 24, but rather the situation from February-May 2022, when the Russian army made a true hell in the city. They destroyed infrastructure and residential buildings with missile strikes, caused hunger, engaged in looting, organized terror and repression against those who do not support the occupation.
As for Russian citizens, Russia is interested to have them not only going to work in Mariupol but also staying there. Therefore, as we wrote earlier, Russia offers visitors a preferential (under 2%) mortgage for the purchase of housing on the seized Ukrainian lands. As the adviser to the mayor said, while this housing has not yet been built, the occupation authorities of the city decided to accommodate them in the apartments of the evacuated Mariupol residents. For that purpose, they initially recognized such apartments as “orphaned.” There is also some information that the Russian military who destroyed the city are offered the keys to those apartments.
Occupation authorities Мариуполь сейчас/Telegram
According to Petro Andryushchenko, another incentive that Russia uses to convince their citizens to go to live and work in Mariupol is the seaside and warm climate, which is much more attractive than in the vast majority of Russian territory.
In the end, the resettlement of citizens of the Russian Federation to Mariupol is used by the aggressor country to achieve two more objectives. First, the ethnic composition of the occupied territories is changing. Therefore, they want to have Russians outnumbering the Ukrainians. The approach is not new: Moscow has already done so since the Holodomor and World War II (in Crimea and Donbas). Secondly, this is the way for Russia to solve problems with migrants. Immigrants from Central Asia are not favored by Russians because of the xenophobic attitudes. The Kremlin’s rationale goes like this: the more “new Russians” come to Mariupol, the less of them will be left in Russia.
Russia seems to have come up with an ideal plan. However, they do not take into account one important point — the Armed Forces of Ukraine have a completely different vision of Mariupol and all the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia.
This is how our Mariupol sends signals... Мариуполь сейчас/Telegram