Report
Ukraine: in Mariupol, a pro-Russian administration is gradually being put in place
An elderly Mariupol resident stands near buildings destroyed by clashes, April 29, 2022 © Alexander Ermoshenko, Reuters
Text by: Anissa El Jabri Follow
3 mins
As the Kremlin continues its “
special operation
” – as it calls it – in Ukraine, in the port city of Mariupol, a period of transition has opened: Russia is gradually putting in place its administration and its men.
The city is now considered to belong to one of the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass.
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From our special correspondent in Mariupol,
A queue lengthens under the spring sun between two buildings that no longer really stand up and red and yellow tulips that have grown in ten days in the middle of the wild grass.
The inhabitants, often elderly, hold a paper and a number in their hands.
In front of them, at a table, several people check their names on a list before giving them boxes of humanitarian aid stamped with the “Z” for “
special operation
”, as the Kremlin says.
For water, there are now huge cisterns.
More help for the living;
the dead will wait.
“
Some apartments are covered in debris.
Yesterday we went to see one with a friend.
We asked:
"Isn't there a grandmother here?".
We ended up opening the door with a crowbar
: his body was on the couch.
»
According to residents, the last bodies that litter the streets have been picked up.
But others are still invisible.
“
Many people are still under the rubble, they have not been identified and we are not able to count them,
explains Denis Pushilin, leader of the self-proclaimed republic of Donetsk.
Many ruins also need to be cleared.
So even getting close to it will require serious specialists to remove the mines.
»
Mariupol “
is part of Russian Donbass
”
More than half of the inhabitants would have left the city, we hear in the conversations, sometimes at the height of the conflict and without knowing if their relatives, in another district, were dead or alive.
In the port city, only
the Azovstal factory
is still
subjected to intensive bombardments
which resound when one approaches.
Elsewhere, the new pro-Russian administration is set up and it must manage a population at least halved.
It is in any case the estimate of the inhabitants of a district of the city center.
For the leader of the self-proclaimed republic of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, "
Mariupol is part of Russian Donbass and now has an administration
".
The citizens of Mariupol understood well that they needed a vertical organization of power and the possibility of contacting the administration (...) All the citizens of the city must also participate so that we can clean everything up and put everything back in place as quickly as possible.
In some places, people take the initiative to sweep the streets, remove garbage and shrapnel.
But there has to be coordination and it has to come from the local administration.
Denis Pushilin, leader of the self-proclaimed republic of Donetsk
Anissa El Jabri
People wonder about their future
The inhabitants, themselves, have many questions to address to their new mayor as well as to all the representatives they can meet: when will the bodies in the apartments be taken away?
When will public transport be put back in place?
Where to finally find vegetables?
But also about the payment of pensions: “
People are also interested in their pensions, how they will be paid.
This worries them a lot, we want this information
, ”says a resident.
The question comes up, insistent, to the point of annoying a local official: “
You are asking the wrong people.
You should ask your former mayor Boychenko who ran away and left you, you know?
All these questions about your pensions, you have to address them to him and to
Zelensky, they are the ones responsible
!
We, our goal here was to save you
!
»
While Mariupol remains without electricity, without a bank, and with very little money circulating, the question of the future and of income is already haunting.
For this report, Anissa El Jabri was accompanied by the Russian army.
All of our daily, live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
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