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If Mariupol is retaken by Kiev, Putin’s reputation will be in tatters
Nowhere in the Donbass have people suffered more than the people of Mariupol since 2014. Abutting the strategically important Sea of Azov, and with a pre-2022 conflict population of close to 500,000, Mariupol is emblematic of the contradictions that erupted in the wake of Maidan. Known as a traditionally Russophone city, pro-Russian separatists briefly rose up and took control of Mariupol after the Yanukovych government was toppled in Kiev, before being crushed by the newly formed ultra nationalist and far right Azov Battalion (now Regiment), and another though lesser known Ukrainian Neo-Nazi militia group — Dnieper-1.
Thereafter, both groups unleashed a veritable reign of terror against Mariupol’s pro-Russian population. This involved arbritary detention, torture, extra-juidical killings and the proscription of the use of the Russian language in public.
This is not to suggest that the entire pre-2014 population of Mariupol was pro-Russian. But a sizeable proportion of it was, which is why the city holds such ideological and historical…
