Mariupol, as seen from the air on May 18 during a media visit organized by the Russian army. The Black Sea port fell this week from Russian invasion forces after weeks of heavy fighting by Ukrainian defenders. ANDREI BORODULIN / AFP via Getty Images
Mariupol is now synonymous with destroyed buildings, thousands of victims and fierce resistance from recent Ukrainian fighters before the strategic port city finally falls under Russian control this week.
But this is not all that Mariupol is or was. Before Russian President Vladimir Putin began this war – his troops launched an attack on Mariupol in the early hours of February 24 – the city was moving out of its hectic industrial past to become one of the cultural capitals of eastern Ukraine. It was a growing high-tech center, a place of modern beer bars, boisterous independent news media and a proud LGBTQ community. Just before the war, a new promenade was built along the coast of the Sea of Azov in the city. The next water park was to be.
The city, known for its Soviet-era steel mills, was in the midst of Europe’s transformation, with some believing that the Russian army seemed more inclined to destroy Mariupol than to take it.
The residents were proud of what they were building. They saw the modernization of the century-old port as a counterpoint to the repressive atmosphere that looks back on the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk, about 100 kilometers to the north.
Much of Mariupol’s new audacity comes from Ukrainians who moved there to escape life in the Donetsk People’s Republic, which Moscow-backed extremists had declared after seizing the regional capital in 2014.
A woman in Mariupol passes a Russian flag on a damaged building on May 12th. Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters
Today, the Russian flag flies over ruined Mariupol. The former residents are left with only memories of the city they knew and painful stories about how they escaped.
“Mariupol was a city with a bad reputation for ecology. There was a bad reputation in the factories. But I saw with my own eyes how Mariupol is growing into a cool, cultural place, “said Danil Sidelev, an IT specialist who worked for two Ukrainian media outlets in the city. “It’s horrible what you did to him.”
Like many in the creative class of Mariupol, Mr. Sidelev arrived as an exile from Donetsk. His new home was dominated by the polluting Azovstal and Ilicha steel plants – and their politically influential owner, oligarch Rinat Akhmetov – but Mariupol was still a freer place to live than the neo-USSR that Moscow’s proxies were building in Donetsk.
Precisely because of his experience since the conquest of Donetsk by Russia, Mr. Sidelev did not flee Mariupol before the outbreak of the wider war.
“I thought I heard artillery, I can handle it. But it was completely different, “he said.” We knew that if Russia wanted to take over Mariupol, they would not be able to. But they made another decision – to erase it completely. “
In 2019, Mariupol was still not in ruins as it is now, but signs of conflict in Donetsk were pervasive. This mural shows Milana Abdurashitova losing her leg in a missile attack on Mariupol in 2015. Anton Globe and Mail
Izba Chytalnia, shown in 2017, was a famous hipster bar in Donetsk before the pro-Russian uprising. Rediscovered in Mariupol, it has become a magnet for the local creative class. Anton Skyba / Globe and Mail
The town hall, shown in 2019, was wrapped in banners after a massive fire caused by pro-Russian protesters five years earlier. Anton Skyba / Globus and Post Azovstal Steelmaking, shown in 2017, will be the last bastion of Ukraine’s defense against Russian forces until last week. Anton Skyba / Globe and Mail
Yulia Didenko did not want to move to Mariupol. The journalist remained in Donetsk, covering the rise of the People’s Republic for as long as she could in 2014. But reporters who did not follow the new pro-Russian line soon became targets. A car belonging to its editor-in-chief on the Donbass News website was set on fire in front of his apartment. It was time to leave.
When she first arrived in Mariupol in July of that year, Ms. Didenko was not impressed by what she saw. “I felt like I was 10 years back, not 100 kilometers south,” the 33-year-old recalled.
Pre-war Donetsk was moving forward, largely because of the new international airport and other facilities built for the city’s role as co-host of Euro 2012. Meanwhile, Mariupol was still the same post-Soviet industrial mess it visited as a student.
“Before 2014, it was a deeply provincial city in the shadow of Donetsk,” said Konstantin Batozsky, a political adviser who was among those who fled the regional capital of Mariupol amid a proxy war ahead of Russia’s wider invasion of Ukraine. . “Mariupol was just an industrial addition to the prosperous Donetsk.
Nevertheless, the city was ready for the influx of intellectual capital that came its way. Although known as an economically dead end, Mariupol – which was founded in 1779 by a colony of Greeks expelled from nearby Crimea by Catherine the Great – has always had something of an international feel for it.
Cheese shops, microbreweries and art shows soon appeared in the city, which changed its appearance. the city center, especially the section between the main square with its elegant drama theater and the rebuilt coastline. “We had a favorite little cafe where my friend and I drank prosecco and ate delicious Camembert burgers,” Ms. Didenko recalls with longing.
People in Mariupol during Gogol Fest in 2018 ALEKSEY FILIPPOV / AFP / Getty Images
Those who came to Mariupol were in many cases the cultural and intellectual elite of Donetsk. Both cities are populated mainly by Russian-speaking Ukrainians, but those fleeing Donetsk have had direct experience with the repression and poverty that come with Mr Putin’s attempts to build “Russian peace” or “Russian world” by rebuilding Moscow’s control over some of the territories it lost during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
“Mariupol had deep resistance to the Russian story. They did not buy this Russian Peace, Mr Batozski said in an interview in Kyiv, where he now helps run a volunteer center that collects donations and supplies to Ukrainian troops fighting for Mariupol and other cities on the front line. .
“We called Mariupol the front base of Ukraine. But it was more than a military post, it was the symbol of modern Ukraine – diverse, global. That’s why Russia literally destroyed it. “
Mrs. Didenko, who fled Mariupol on February 23, the day before the start of the greater war, finds it difficult to talk about what happened to the city she slowly fell in love with.
“Mariupol, where I arrived eight years ago, and Mariupol, which I had to leave when the full-scale Russian invasion began, are two different cities.
She has no idea what happened to the apartment she lives in or the cafes she visits. She wonders if the woman who cut her hair is alive or dead. “It’s as if your whole life has been ruined.”
The interior of the Mariupol Drama Theater, as it looked in 2018 and last April, after Russian troops bombed it and took control of it on March 16. Lev Sandalov and Alexei Alexandrov / Satellite photos of the Associated Press show the intact red roof of the theater intact on March 14, and in ruins on March 29. Maxar Technologies via AP
If one episode of Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine can be called more horrific than the others, it may be the bombing of the Mariupol Drama Theater on March 16. The center of cultural life in Mariupol has been instantly turned into a mass grave and, according to a report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, a war crime scene.
As fighting raged across the city, more than 1,000 people took refuge in the White Stone Theater. A week before the attack, the theater’s set designers used white paint to write “CHILDREN” – in Russian for “CHILDREN” – on the sidewalk in front of the building, hoping to stop the attack from above.
It didn’t matter. On the morning of March 16, the theater received a direct hit, which led to the collapse of the roof of the main stage and the auditorium. An Associated Press investigation later estimated that nearly 600 people were killed in the attack.
The city’s mayor estimated last month that at least 21,000 people died in Mariupol as a result of the war. The figure has not been updated since April 12.
Mariupol gallery and activist Diana Berg, shown in 2019 Anton Skyba / Globe and mail
When she lived in Mariupol, Diana Berg had an amazing view of the Drama Theater with its column facade and eye-catching red roof from her apartment overlooking the Theater Square.
It was a suitable home for Ms. Berg, a gallery owner and director of the local LGBTQ center, who was one of the most famous figures on the Mariupol cultural scene.
Now both the apartment and its view are gone. Ms. Berg fled Mariupol on the eighth day of the war, as Russian air strikes made the city uninhabitable by cutting off electricity, water and heating in early March. The worst thing for Ms. Berg was the loss of the Internet and any connection to the world outside Mariupol.
According to her, her apartment on the Theater Square has since been taken over by Russian soldiers and used as an observation post.
“You always…
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