Easter service begins early Sunday morning at the St. Nicholas Cathedral in the center of Mariupol.
Services here did not stop, despite the fighting in the city, but in March and April, priests and parishioners were forced to conduct them in the basement of the cathedral.
Residents of nearby houses, who were left homeless, hid there.
Until now, people who have nowhere to live sometimes come to spend the night in the cathedral.
By the time of the main Christian holiday of Easter, the staff of the cathedral and volunteers managed to repair the colored stained-glass windows, into which fragments from the shelling of the nationalists flew.
Fortunately, the shells did not hit the church building itself, although the parishioners suffered from the actions of the Ukrainian military.
“As early as February 25, the Ukrainian military from Azov broke into the church.
I was baptizing a child at that time.
They behaved rudely, cursed, expressed themselves unflatteringly towards our church, ”one of the priests of the cathedral told RT.
According to him, the military took away the parishioners' cars that were on the territory of the cathedral, part of the money and food that was stored at the temple.
The priest himself was hit in the face with a rifle butt, the guard was thrown to the floor and kicked, one of the workers was hit with broken ribs.
“They also took away cars in other temples.
In general, it was a very mass phenomenon here: the military took cars to move around the city.
What residents are now saying that Ukrainian tanks and mortars fired at their homes is also true.
There are many witnesses to this.
Why they did it, I don't know for sure.
People have their own ideas.
Perhaps they were under the influence of drugs - they wanted to show that everyone here should obey them, ”says the priest.
Dismantle the rubble, feed the people
Easter has become the first holiday that Mariupol residents can celebrate not in basements and without fear of falling under shelling.
On April 21, the city officially came under the control of Russian troops and DPR forces.
One of the priorities now is to dismantle the rubble of the destroyed buildings in the city.
In the five-story house No. 98 on Mitropolitskaya Street in the Central District, public utilities employees are lifting the slabs of the collapsed entrance with a crane.
A shell flew into the middle of the building - people who were hiding in the basement and in apartments in this part of the house died.
“Those who were hiding in the basements in the first and third entrances were able to get out.
Now I don’t know if this house will be demolished or restored.
But in any case, they will first get the bodies,” says pensioner Tamara from a neighboring house, who went out for a walk in the yard with her dog.
Her husband died four days ago in his apartment, not from wounds and explosions, but from a stroke.
Tamara turned to the state institution of ritual services, then to a private company with a request to bury her husband, but no one came for him.
After the end of hostilities, the inhabitants of Mariupol buried their loved ones in the yards and on the lawns of the streets.
RT
A construction crane picks up another fragment of a slab at the site of a collapse, and a cat suddenly jumps out from under it - dirty, thin, but alive.
Then the workers throw off another slab and begin to pinch their noses: a putrid smell is spreading from the blockage.
Dead again.
Local residents who signed up as volunteers also participate in the analysis of the rubble.
So, volunteers help to remove the bodies of people who died in the explosion of the Drama Theater.
For four days of work, rescuers of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the DPR and volunteers were able to remove the bodies of 11 dead.
Mariupol residents who remained in the city during the shelling now live together in small communities in houses that have survived.
In the yards, people break out sheds and equip kitchens in order to cook food together for several families at once.
The smell of bonfires is felt everywhere in Mariupol.
Residents of one of the houses converted a gazebo in the yard into a covered kitchen-dining room and even equipped a recreation area here: they took out a sofa and a table.
A woman, sitting by the fire, watches how carrots and potatoes are boiled in pots on the fire.
Above the "stove" on hooks hangs a few ladles and potholders.
Opposite the gazebo, under a canopy, a young guy and two girls are playing chess while waiting for dinner.
Nearby, leaning his knee on a bench, a man saws large branches of trees so that people have firewood.
“Our yard survived miraculously: a shell flew towards us, but it didn’t hit the house,” says Tatyana.
Ten meters from the entrance there is a huge funnel with a diameter of about five meters.
At the bottom is a trash can.
Tatyana and her neighbors get the things they need to live at the nearest humanitarian aid point.
Once a month, every resident of the city can receive a box of food and a package with the necessary household chemicals according to his passport.
“Humanitarian, by the way, is good – there is enough of it.
From food they give everything you need: cereals, salt, stew, bread.
We have neither water nor electricity in our house, I think that they will not be able to get it done soon.
So for the next two or three months we will definitely have to live with a field kitchen in the yard, ”the woman says.
An excavator drives up to her nine-story house and begins to shovel a huge pile of garbage that has accumulated on the side of the road.
Today is the first day in two months when the garbage near their house is removed.
According to Tatyana, it was only in the last week that she finally “felt like a human again,” because she no longer has to constantly hide in the basement.
“Those who evacuated from Mariupol and whose apartments survived are slowly starting to return,” the woman says.
- I would very much like to see more law enforcement officers in the city, so that they would keep order.
People are different, it's very scary that they can rob or even worse.
The more power, the better for the city, otherwise it turns out that every man is for himself.”
Opposite the house in which Tatyana lives, there is a two-story building of the labor exchange.
From next week, a new city hall will be located here: the flags of Russia and the DPR have already been installed above the entrance.
As local residents found out, it will be possible to come here to, among other things, apply for a pension, which will be paid by the authorities of the DPR.
The city starts over
We are selling kittens!
Straight-eared - 700 rubles, lop-eared - one and a half thousand, ”- two girls of ten years old invite buyers.
Two white kittens sit in front of them in a plastic carrier.
The girls, together with their mother, came to the city market, which was formed on the site of broken stalls and shops.
People lay out a few goods on plastic tables or simply on the sidewalks.
They sell everything: from cigarettes and household chemicals to Azov shrimps and homemade pies.
Immediately, for 20 hryvnia per hour, the man offers to charge the phones from the generator.
Now the city accepts both rubles and hryvnias.
RT
“Tell me, does a piece of paper worth 500 rubles go to the DPR and Russia at all?
- the saleswoman is interested in the buyer, who came here from Donetsk.
- And then I sold my bicycle for 4 thousand to a peasant, then I already saw that there was one in banknotes - 500 rubles.
I can't remember if it's still in use or not."
The buyer reassures her, says that everything is in order with the banknote and soon there will be more rubles in Mariupol.
“I hope that the hryvnia will not be removed from us immediately, we will gradually switch to rubles.
And yet there are not enough of them at all, almost all of them pay in hryvnias, ”the woman continues to worry.
Many residents complain that in February they did not have time to withdraw money from bank cards: then huge queues lined up at ATMs in the city.
Now it is no longer possible to withdraw savings from the cards of Ukrainian banks in the city.
Among the sellers there are those who have already managed to travel from Mariupol to the nearest peaceful settlements or Donetsk, bought goods there and now sell them here at a premium.
Broken military equipment is still lying on the streets of the city.
RT
“Now people set the prices they want.
But I think it won't be that long.
When food is delivered to stores at normal prices, there will be competition and private traders will also lower prices,” says Marina, who has worked at the market in Mariupol for 20 years.
During the hostilities, the woman was able to run to her point in the market and take home two bags of her goods - slippers.
“And when I came for the last bag, there were already comrades marauders there.
I tell them: "Give it back."
They told me: “Get out of here, otherwise we will drag you in.”
Well, to spite them, I poured these slippers out of the bag onto the ground and went home, ”Marina smiles.
Now in the new market, she sells slippers that she managed to take home.
Her neighbor, who sells children's clothes and baseball caps, is willing to give away the goods cheaply.
He says that he wants to sell it as soon as possible and go to relatives who live beyond Donetsk.
One of the scarcest and most needed goods is the SIM cards of the DPR mobile provider.
It is almost impossible to get them in the city.
The network of Ukrainian providers no longer works here.
Due to the lack of communication, the inhabitants of the city are informationally cut off from the rest of the world.
At the market and at points of distribution of humanitarian aid, residents are trying to find out from each other what is happening outside of Mariupol.
Most of all, people are concerned about the question of how soon they will be able to return to a normal, peaceful life.
“There are rumors that Ukraine does not agree that Mariupol is now under the DPR.
Allegedly, the army will go from Lvov again to recapture the city,” says Elena, a resident, finishing her cigarette.
She is nervous because she has not been able to contact her brother from the Left Bank district of the city for two months.
And at home she has a 75-year-old mother who cannot walk due to a stroke.
- How long can it be, is it all going to happen again?
Let me live in peace.
At least some houses in the city have survived, so now they want to completely raze us to the ground?
“Yes, these are all rumors,” the man next to her confidently answers, choosing a fresher loaf from the counter.
“They don’t have an army to recapture the city.
Now let's get used to the new city.
Vaughn Donetsk, they say, quickly returned to life in 2014.”