Ukraine, the Donbas and Mariupol (Part Two)
Twenty kilometres from one of the Donbas fronts is the town of Mariupol (Donetsk) under the sovereignty of the Ukrainian government. This city, economically dependent on port activity and its steel factories, was once an unattractive grey city, but in the last three years Kiev wanted to invest in it. The Ukrainian government's aim was to make this city, so close to the Donbas fronts and mostly Russian-speaking, synonymous with investment and splendour compared to the capital Donetsk.
But there was one person who stood out in Mariupol in terms of the city's transformation, the mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko. Elected to office during 2015, he found a city marked by the exodus of young professionals, as the city was defined by its purely industrial character and high levels of pollution, and years later he managed to get many of these young people to stay. The mayor carried out an economic policy aimed at attracting national and foreign investment, which had a positive impact on the decline in the emigration rates of the city's young and active population. For these results, his work was recognised in 2019 by the Mariupol Investment Forum.
The need for investment was so great that President Zelenski chose Mariupol for its potential for progress and consolidation to host the investment forum 'RE: THINK. Invest in Ukraine' in October 2019. The event was a success, attended by nearly 350 guests and more than 50 representatives of international and Ukrainian investment funds, companies, donor organisations and international financial corporations, including the Vice-President of the European Investment Fund and the Vice-President of the World Bank for Europe and Central Asia.
The meeting was aimed at investors discovering a Ukraine that is open to seeking investment and free trade agreements in global markets. But for capital to be invested in a country, it needs to be in a phase of economic growth and, above all, political stability. At the moment, the economy was growing at a low 2.5% and political stability was relatively acceptable, although the shadow of the Russian regime, both in terms of the Donbas and the annexation of Crimea, was dampening international investment and with it the modernisation of the Ukrainian economy.
While the government in Kiev was struggling to pull Ukraine out of the economic crisis, the political and economic situation in the city hindered this. On the one hand, geographically Mariupol lay very close to the fronts in the area (Shyrokyne and Novotrotske), such that its citizens were already becoming familiar4 with the sound of mortar explosions. On the other hand, the city was suffering from the Russian navy's blockade of the Sea of Azov, which prevented part of the fishing supply in the port of Mariupol, as well as Ukrainian exports.
The city's inhabitants knew that if Putin gave the order to invade the Ukrainian Donbas, they would be in danger, so its citizens prepared for that moment. Mariupol was living in the present, a city that invested in hospitals, schools, kindergartens, parks and gardens, with a theatre, which was one of the city's icons, and with a football stadium, whose team played in the Ukrainian first division and in the UEFA Europa League. Unfortunately, Putin's threat materialised on 24 February, when a force of 190,000 Russian military, backed by Chechen militias, invaded Ukraine and with it, Mariupol.
It was the beginning of hell for the city, which went from being pampered by the political leadership because of its proximity to the front to being severely punished by Putin's troops. To this end, a strategy was drawn up based on the ruthless Grozny Doctrine, which states that the level of destruction by artillery in the city to be invaded must be such that not a single building is left standing and the civilian population flees in fear, making it easier for the infantry to overcome any attempt at resistance.
The city was of important strategic value to Putin, as it controlled the entire Donbas and Crimea, and with the invasion of Mariupol they would control the entire strip of land along the Sea of Azov. For all these reasons, the importance of Mariupol was paramount to the Russian regime's expansionist plans. The city is now a heap of iron and rubble, and the memory of that Russian and Ukrainian city, whose citizens had witnessed its transformation in recent years, remains. A city that strived to reduce pollution and invested in building infrastructure to increase its attractiveness and potential.
Its inhabitants have fled the city in their thousands, having seen the horror up close over the past three months. Many have lost their lives and others have lost family members, witnessing their homes destroyed and neighbours killed when they came across a tank. They have even seen dogs eating corpses in the streets. That city, as Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov explained to journalist Javier Espinosa of the newspaper El Mundo, which they managed to transform into a modern city. It was a city where festivals, cultural activities, etc. were held. Everything has been destroyed and nearly 300,000 people have fled the city and most of them will probably not return, as they have nowhere to go back to or do not want to.
Mariupol no longer exists. Putin's troops inflicted such a level of destruction on it that it will take years to rebuild. The Chechen and Russian troops have been so thoroughly employed that about 80% of the city's infrastructure and buildings have been damaged. As for the soul of the city, its inhabitants, they have been forced to flee. Before the war, there were 450,000 inhabitants. Now, around 300,000 are in a global diaspora, mostly to EU countries, the UK and the US. It is estimated that around 100,000 people still remain in the city, risking indiscriminate killing, in appalling conditions, without water, gas, food and surrounded by death and destruction.
At the beginning of the invasion, inhabitants of Mariupol created a group on the telegram channel called @MARIUPOLNOW, in which the inhabitants gave detailed information through messages and photos about the state of the different streets of the city. The portal was used by citizens to check the current state of their homes from which they had had to flee.
The city was eventually taken by Russian troops. However, the last stronghold in the region was the Azovstal steelworks, a complex created in the 1930s and considered one of the largest in the world at 11 square kilometres. It was planned to be full of bunkers and passages along its length. The complex was to be defended by marines, members of the territorial defence, Ukrainian national guard and also by members of the Azov battalion among others.
Finally, on 17 May, the siege ended. The Ukrainian military authorities agreed with the Russian authorities, mediated by the UN and the Red Cross, that the defenders would lay down their arms and save their lives, with the first 300 defenders, including many wounded, leaving the steelworks, according to the agreement with the Russian authorities, in a future prisoner exchange.
The infrastructure and buildings of Mariupol were destroyed. It is miraculous that any block of flats in the capital has escaped unscathed by artillery shelling. Its strategic location led to its fierce conquest by blood and fire, under a most brutal Grozny doctrine, which resulted in more than 300,000 displaced persons in a city of almost half a million people.
With the strategic city in Russian hands, approximately three quarters of the Donbas would be taken by Putin's troops, with the special operation now focusing on Severodonetsk, which would be the de facto Ukrainian capital in Lugansk province, and then continuing the attack on Sloviansk in Donetsk province, as this would bring them significantly closer to the provincial borders of the Donbas, which would be Putin's pioneering objective.
To conclude, the thousands of inhabitants who have remained in Mariupol are trying to overcome the more than 100 days of war and, since they cannot live a normal life, at least try to survive in the midst of the destruction, although they do not know what the immediate future of the city will be, which depends on the Russian president's plans. Therefore it would not be strange given the resistance caused to his troops, that he changed the name to it.
However, despite the fact that Putin's troops are close to reaching their primary objectives, the words of the head of the Ukrainian government in mid-April "we will not give up" the Donbas must be taken into account.
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And meanwhile... the war goes on.
If the General cannot overcome his anger and has his army besieging the citadel, after having had a third of his soldiers killed, and yet the citadel still holds out, it is a disastrous attack. Sun Tzu. The Art of War.
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Luis Montero Molina is political scientist