After Russia’s relentless attacks in 2022, the port city of Mariupol in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast was left in ruins. Yet this has not stopped Russians from buying up houses and flats in Mariupol, or even trying to exchange them for their property in Russia.
The first Russian bomb hit the outskirts of Mariupol an hour after video journalist Mstyslav Chernov arrived to the city on Feb. 24, the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. For 20 days that followed, Chernov’s team captured Russian blows strangling the city block by block.
Ten months after barely surviving the Russian bombing of a theater in Mariupol, Viktoria Dubovitska is keeping a close eye on her seven-year-old son. Artem remembers “almost everything” about what he saw in the March tragedy, the mother said. He tries not to talk about it, but unwanted memories keep
Editor’s Note: The names of some of the people interviewed by the Kyiv Independent for this story have been changed to protect their identity as they have shared sensitive information that could place them and their families in danger. Three months after Russia’s brutal months-long siege of Mariupol
On a warm day in mid-May, Ukrainian Tetiana Lastovych, 29, was getting ready to be discharged from the maternity hospital in the city of Zaporizhzhia after giving birth to her third child, a baby boy Illia. As she approached the glass doors to the hospital, Lastovych froze in shock: There
Throughout Russia's war, Ukrainians all over the country have shown remarkable courage, be it to help a stranger or save their loved ones. In this episode of our podcast “Did the War End?” we hear from one of those Ukrainians — Max — who drove from Kyiv to Mariupol in the middle
Azovstal, a steel plant in now Russian-occupied Mariupol, has become a symbol of Ukraine’s fierce resistance to the Russian invasion. Thousands of Ukrainian fighters defended the plant with little to no resources, refusing to surrender for nearly three months. In this episode of our podcast “Did the War End?
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said that 264 Ukrainian soldiers were evacuated on May 16 from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol to hospitals in Russian-occupied Novoazovsk and Olenivka. Of those evacuated, 53 heavily wounded soldiers will receive medical treatment in Novoazovsk, while 211 will be transferred to Olenivka to
The wives of the last Ukrainian soldiers left in Mariupol, the southern city that is mostly occupied by Russians and 90% destroyed after weeks of constant Russian shelling, called on the world to help save their husbands. Five Ukrainian women whose husbands are among the Ukrainian soldiers holding out at
Viktoria Dubovitska, 24, and her two children survived the Russian bombing of the Mariupol Drama Theater by pure luck. Like hundreds of Mariupol residents, Dubovitska's family was sheltering near the theater’s main stage. But on March 16, her two-year-old daughter Anastasia got sick, and the family was offered a
Ukrainian marines defending Mariupol came out with a public statement criticizing President Volodymyr Zelensky and the army command. The 36th Marine Brigade accused the country’s leadership of abandoning them in the besieged port city with no ammunition left, saying that it might be their last day of fighting. “For
Ukraine's Azov regiment said on April 11 that Russia had used a poisonous substance against Ukrainian troops in Mariupol, a besieged port on the Sea of Azov. Azov leader Andriy Biletsky said that three people have clear signs of chemical poisoning. He added that there are no "disastrous consequences" for
“Sometimes hope returns to me. But sometimes it leaves, and I think that we are all going to die,” says Anastasiia Kiseliova, a 40-year-old mother of three, as she walks through the streets of Mariupol, voice-recording herself on an iPhone. “The city is gone,” she adds, her voice trembling. She
When Mariupol journalist Artem Popov speaks about his hometown, it sounds like he has a lump in his throat. The southeastern city of Mariupol has turned into a front line of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine. It’s dangerous to move around the city because Russian warplanes are flying
It is widely believed that Russian leadership expected its all-out invasion of Ukraine to succeed within days. Twenty days later, Ukraine still stands, and Russia has no major victories to claim. It seized only one large city and regional center, Kherson in southern Ukraine. To force Ukraine to surrender, Russia
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