Russia rebuilds on a city of death
Links to Mariupol’s Ukrainian past being erased, probe shows
Throughout Mariupol, Russian workers are tearing down bombed-out buildings at a rate of at least one a day, hauling away shattered bodies with the debris. Russian military convoys rumble down the broad avenues, and Russian soldiers, builders, administrators and doctors are replacing the thousands of Ukrainians who have died or left.
Many of the city’s Ukrainian street names are reverting to Soviet ones, with the Avenue of Peace to be labeled Lenin Avenue. Even the large sign that announces the name of the city at its entrance has been Russified.
Eight months after Mariupol fell into Russian hands, Russia is eradicating all vestiges of Ukraine from it — along with the evidence of war crimes buried in its buildings, such as the famed Drama Theater where demolition started Thursday. The few schools still open teach a Russian curriculum, phone and television networks are Russian, the Ukrainian currency is fading away, and Mariupol is now in the Moscow time zone. On the ruins of the old Mariupol, a new Russian city is rising, The Associated Press found.
But the investigation also underlines what Mariupol’s residents already know: No matter what the Russians do, they are building upon a city of death. More than 10,000 new graves scar Mariupol, the AP found, and the death toll might be much higher than the government-in-exile’s early estimate of at least 25,000. The former Ukrainian city is also hollowing out, losing well over 50,000 homes, the AP calculated.
Every one of the dozens of people the AP spoke to knew someone killed during the siege of Mariupol, which began with the Feb. 24 invasion.
Lydya Erashova watched her 5-year-old son and her 7-year-old niece die after a Russian shelling in March. The family hastily buried the cousins in a yard and fled Mariupol. They returned in July to rebury the children, only to learn that the bodies had been dug up and taken to a warehouse. As they approached the city center, each block was bleaker than the last.
Erashova, who is now in Canada, said no Russian rebuilding plan could bring back what Mariupol lost.
“How do you restore a dead city where people were killed at every turn?” she asked.
The AP investigation
drew on interviews with 30 residents from Mariupol, including 13 living under Russian occupation; satellite imagery; videos from inside the city; and Russian documents showing a master plan.
Mariupol was in the crosshairs of the Kremlin from the first day of the invasion. Just 25 miles from the Russian border, the city is a port on the Sea of Azov and crucial for Russian supply lines. The city was hit relentlessly with airstrikes and artillery. By the time the last Ukrainian fighters surrendered in the Azovstal steel mill in May, Mariupol had become a symbol of resistance.
An AP analysis of satellite imagery taken over the past eight months of occupation shows 8,500 new graves in the outlying Staryi Krym cemetery, with the possibility
of multiple bodies beneath each mound. There are at least three other trench gravesites around the city, including one created by Ukrainians.
In all, at least 10,300 new graves are scattered around Mariupol, according to AP’s methodology, confirmed by three forensic pathologists. Thousands more bodies likely never made it to the graveyard.
In May, the municipal government in exile estimated at least 25,000 people had died. But at least three people in the city since June say the number killed is triple that or more, based on conversations with the workers documenting body collection for Russian occupation authorities.
In a review of hundreds of photos and video clips along with documents from occupation authorities, the
AP found that more than 300 buildings in Mariupol have been or are about to be demolished. In all, the demolitions will remove well over 50,000 homes, according to AP calculations.
“People still live in the basements. Where they can go is unclear,” said an activist in Mariupol, who requested anonymity.
Russia is now moving into the historic city center. Russian authorities dismantled Mariupol’s memorial to victims of the Holodomor, the Soviet-engineered famine in the 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians, according to video posted on Russian television. They painted over two murals commemorating victims of Russia’s 2014 attack on Ukraine.
Russia already has constructed at least 14 new
apartment buildings and is repairing at least two of the hospitals it damaged by shelling.
But the plans for a Russian Mariupol depend on a population that simply no longer exists.
Thousands of Mariupol’s former residents were sent to Russia with little or no choice, and thousands more fled into other areas of Ukraine. Of Mariupol’s former population of around 425,000, just over a quarter stayed, according to estimates from Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to Mariupol’s mayor who is exiled in Dnipro.
The Russian master plan for Mariupol calls for a population of 212,000 in 2022, and back to 425,000 by 2030. Right now, about 15,000 of the people in Mariupol are Russian troops, said Andryushchenko.