Here’s a little video from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) about some of the “Russification” actions happening in the occupied regions of Ukraine. The video starts in Mariupol, but also has some views/discussion of events in Kherson. These events are happening all over the regions, though some such events had already happened in the parts of Luhansk and Donetsk that were captured back in 2014.

The one thing I’m not really clear on from the video is the passports. Ukraine has two passports — a domestic version, which is an internal identity document, and an international version, which is the passport Americans are familiar with. I know from past reporting, that Russia issued domestic passports in Luhansk and Donetsk, which makes sense from an occupation standpoint. However, such passports are typically issued locally, because they serve as a registry of residence and population. In the video, a person talks about people going to Crimea to get their new passports, which doesn’t really make sense if these are the domestic passports. To my mind, that’s one way to make sure that people won’t get them — destroy their city and then require them to go somewhere else (probably at their own expense) to get your new identity documents.

Edit: Well bummer, I could get the video embedded here, so I guess I’ll just provide a link to it:‘Russification’ Begins With Big Screens, Passports In Occupied Areas Of Ukraine. It’s short, just under 2 minutes.

Mariupol has been without water, gas, communications and electricity for about three months. All that was taken out early in the war, sometime around the beginning of March. There are still about 100,000+ people (estimated) living in and around the city who have been making do, somehow, without these basic elements of contemporary life. Now that the Russians are running the show, they are trying to get those utilities up and running again, but have made some really dumb mistakes in the process.

Apparently, they figured that all they really needed to do was put some water into the system and everything would work. So they connected up a feed and turned it all on. This ended up flooding streets and basements with untreated and undrinkable water so it was pretty much a failure all around:

• In Mariupol, the water was turned off again. It became known how much money is needed to restore the water supply system – 0629.com.ua
• In some areas of Mariupol, the occupiers once again turned on the water – 0629.com.ua
• The streets turned into rivers. In Mariupol, the occupiers gave utility workers diving equipment – VIDEO – 0629.com.ua

Despite the Keystone Kops-like nature of this failure, the lack of water and sanitation are widely expected to lead to an outbreak of cholera in the coming months. I’ve already read some speculation that the Russians would then use the outbreak as “proof” that the US and Ukrainians were using chemical weapons.

As was noted in one of the above articles, you actually need to have the electricity working before the water, because you need the electricity to run the pumping and water treatment stations. (They also need to fix the piping, but what’s good piping if you don’t have good water to put in them?) However, the Russian’s attempts to get the electricity going haven’t fared much better than their plumbing efforts: Apartments are burning in Mariupol due to the attempts of the occupiers to restore power supply – PHOTOS, VIDEO – 0629.com.ua.

(I have to say that I do rather like the snark that many of these local news stories get written with. Clearly the people running the city website are not fans of the occupation.)

The looting of Ukraine continues. There’s been stories about massive amounts of grain being stolen by the Russians. From the Kherson region, I saw a story about farm equipment being stolen as well. (Some of the farmers were able to remotely disable their tractors and combines, which makes me happy.) But even in Mariupol — a city that the Russians bombed to rubble as a way to “liberate” its citizens — the Russians are still finding stuff to steal. Some of the occupation efforts are to fix up — or at least clean up enough of — the port to allow ships to be loaded with loot – In Mariupol, the invaders are trying to resume the work of the port in order to take out the loot, – PHOTOS – 0629.com.ua. In addition to potential grain exports, they also want to take the previously finished steel products from Azovstal – In mariupol port, Russian invaders want to take out stolen metal on stolen ships – 0629.com.ua. Basically, if it wasn’t nailed down before and hasn’t yet been blown up, the Russians will try to take it.

There are very limited plans of rebuilding Mariupol. There are not any plans to restore the city to its pre-war status, only the bare minimums. Some schools, maybe a hospital, definitely administration buildings and housing for military, but that’s it. You say your house was destroyed by Russian shelling? Well, here are a few brinks — fix it yourself. The invaders already want Mariupol residents to repair damaged housing on their own – 0629.com.ua and Imitation of a peaceful life. In Mariupol, the occupiers plan to restore the drama theater and hospitals – 0629.com.ua.

This is not really a surprise. Russian forces and “separatists” took over the city of Donetsk eight years ago, and there is still un-repaired damage from that. I’m not even talking about the airport (which had been newly built in 2012, and was utterly destroyed in the 2014 conflict); there are buildings in downtown Donetsk that still have boards and plastic covering broken windows. (Sorry, I don’t have an article to cite, but this was an eye-witness account by Baba Katya during her visit there a few weeks ago.)

More bodies continue to be found, which makes the estimates of 20,000-22,000 killed during the siege of Mariupol more likely. (About 70 bodies found in former Oktiabr plant territory in Mariupol – ukrinform.net). Additionally, the unexploded ordnance around the city will continue to increase the death toll — Russian shelling is the gift that keeps on giving – A child died near the school in Mariupol – 0629.com.ua.

I’ll have to find something that I can link to or translate, but I’ve seen a couple Telegram posts today about at least one Mariupol story that appeared in a Russian newspaper. In it, the Russian military was lauded for taking Mariupol with only limited damage. It is such a crock it boggles the minds. Here’s a video from someone driving near and around the city center of Mariupol (it’s kind of long, about 4 minutes). It’s been reported that 90+% of the buildings in Mariupol had been damaged (over half of that beyond repair), and from the video, I don’t think I saw a single place without some sort of damage. So, yeah, “limited damage.”

Two comments about the video. One, toward the end you can see the area around the Drama Theater/Opera House. Mostly the camera is looking across the street, but that is where the video ends up, so you have a frame of reference. Two, there are actually a lot of bicycles in the video, especially for a destroyed and occupied city. I saw almost no one on bikes when I first visited Mariupol. They had grown in popularity since then and people saw that as proof that they were truly becoming a modern, European city (think Amsterdam). It would be nice if the rebuilt, Ukrainian Mariupol went all-in on bikes; I think that would be nice.

Technically, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, so this war has been going on for over 8 years. But it’s been three months since the latest round of actions has begun. Back in 2014, Russia was hiding/lying about what it was doing — suspiciously-accented Russia soldiers in new, unbranded fatigues showing up in Crimea, and “off-duty volunteers” showing up with tanks and weapons in Eastern Ukraine — but this time they’re out in the open about it. Still lying, of course; remember how initially Putin was saying that they had no intention of occupying Ukraine? They were just there to “de-Nazify” the country, put in their own puppet regime, and they were out of there. That line has since given way to various ways of subsuming portions of the east and south into existing oblasts or create a new, region Russian territory from them.

Giving up land for peace has never worked, ever, and I applaud President Zelensky for taking a stand on this. I would also like to see Ukraine’s 2014 borders made whole again, and I think that should be the ultimate goal. I’m not one for war — it’s a failure of diplomacy, common sense and basic humanity — but I believe the rules are meant to be followed if we’re going to call ourselves civilized. In this case the “rules” are internationally agreed-upon borders, and Russia stomped all over those rules.

I’ve been to Ukraine many times, and almost without exception have found the Ukrainian people to be welcoming and generous to me. I think they were a little amused — An American! And so far away from Kyiv! Is he lost? — but they were friendly and open. Despite the differences, I “clicked” with Mariupol, even before I met Viktoria. In some ways, it was always similar to Portland — climate, a port city, etc. I’m saddened to have seen what’s happened to it, and I really want to see it restored — a fully European and Ukrainian city.

A quick family update and recap:

• Katya 2 and Vanya are still in Vienna and getting closer to migrating to Canada. They’ve both been approved for temporary visas, but Katya’s had a typo that needs to be addressed first, and Vanya needs to get an authorized travel document from their visa center. So still moving forward, but with a couple bumps.
• Artem, Katya 1 and family are still in the Mariupol area, so contact has been spotty at best. It sounds like they’ve been “processed” by the occupying forces and fortunately haven’t been re-located to some unknown part of Russia. Not the best of safest situation, but stable for now.
• Baba Katya and Rodion are also in the Mariupol area, a few miles east of Artem’s family. We’ve been trying to get in direct contact, but so far our phone systems haven’t wanted to talk to the occupier’s phone system, which is the only thing working around there. (Viktoria was able to contact Rodion’s teacher — now in Kherson — who was able to contact Katya. Some relaying involved, but it worked.) Katya’s son/Rodion’s father, Roman, is also there, though his wife and their kids have gone to Russia. Again, not a great place to be, but things are stable. I know that Katya and Rodion had gone to Donetsk a few weeks ago, so they can move about a bit and have some resources to get the things they need.
• Inna is still unaccounted for. Apart from one brief blip back in March, there’s been no information.
• Katya 2’s parents and grandmother are still in Volnovakha and seem to be getting by OK. I posted some video of when they came to Mariupol, so they’re able to get around somewhat. They are in regular contact with Zhenya and Katya.
• Zhenya remains on that farm. He may not like helping out with the chores, but he’s safe — well, as safe as anyone can be in Ukraine. I think he should just hunker down for the duration, but Viktoria still seems convinced that he’s going to be drafted and sent to the front lines at any moment. (I try to tell her that just having martial law in place does not mean that’s going to happen, but sometimes you just can’t argue reason.)

(Just a reminder that you can find a relationship tree with all these names under Family in the menu at the top of the page.)

Although Mariupol is largely disappearing from the headlines now that the city has been fallen under Russian control, there are still a number of things happening there which Viktoria and I are both watching. Viktoria essentially says the city is “gone” and not coming back; I’m not as fatalistic. I feel that it will be back in Ukrainian hands and be rebuilt. (I wouldn’t mind being a part of that effort in the future, but that’s aways off and there would be a lot of things to consider surrounding any move to go there and help.)

In the mean time, there’s still news coming from Mariupol. The Russians are trying to make it a victory showcase and propaganda win with the Russian people, but the images and stories continue to show a far different view. What are they supposed to say, “Look at this attractive pile of ‘liberated’ rubble?” For the most part, these “recovery” efforts are about as inept as the Russian military campaign has been.

One of the biggest stories of the past couple days has been the discovery of a couple hundred dead bodies in the rubble of an apartment building on Mira Prospekt, the same street of the family apartment block. I haven’t seen the address so far, but it’s not 110 Mira. There definitely were some buildings that were more damaged (like this one, where Katya 2 used to work), so most likely one of them. Given the elapsed time since the people died and the fact that most of the Ukrainians still around aren’t willing to help clean this up, the situation is rather unpleasant. – About 200 bodies found when dismantling rubble of apartment block in Mariupol – ukrinform.net, The stench is heard almost throughout the quarter. 200 dead found in basement of high-rise buildings in Mariupol – PHOTOS – 0629.com.ua.

Sometimes you have wonder if “they don’t know” or “they don’t care.” Back in March, Russian forces attacked and fired on a nuclear power plant. This is different from their actions around the Chernobyl plant, where soldiers where moving around, digging trenches and camping in the highly contaminated Red Forest area. No, this was a plant in the southern part of Ukraine, and the actions of the Russians could have caused a significant nuclear disaster. Did they not know, or did they just not care. I bring this up because the same can be asked about the Russian shelling of and future plans for the Azovstal steel plant.

Azovstal had been around for nearly 100 years, and its environmental record had been spotty at best. On the south side of the plant, bordering the Azov Sea, there’s a huge containment berm holding back who knows what sort of pollutants and processing waste. In the center is a pile of detritus “affectionately” known as Slag Mountain. There’s been concerns that the shelling of the Azovstal area could or could have affected the berm and created the potential for leakage of the industrial waste into both the Azov and Black Seas – Due to the shelling of Azovstal, the Sea of Azov may die, – city council – 0629.com.ua. While this does not appear to have happened (yet? – The Ministry of Environmental Protection has no confirmation of the leakage of hydrogen sulfide into the Sea of Azov – 0629.com.ua, Pollution of the Azov Sea due to the shelling of Azovstal has not yet been confirmed, – Minister of Environmental Protection – 0629.com.ua), if it were to leak, almost all sea life would be killed off. Even without that, the potential for significant ecological damage is there, just waiting for the next big rain storms – Poisoned Sea of Azov area – ukrinform.net.

Even if the war has managed to avoid an environmental disaster, reconstruction plans could still bring one about. Metinvest, the parent company of Azovstal, has indicated that they want to rebuild the plant (once it’s back in Ukrainian hands), but the occupiers think it would make a much better resort. The area may be razed and turned into a park, office buildings or houses – The leader of the “DNR” Pushilin promised Mariupol technopark on the ruins of “Azovstal”, resort city and new houses – 0629.com.ua. Since the Russians won’t want a mountain of slag and a neon green lake messing up their view, they’ll try to do something dumb to clean it up, which could still cause a massive environment disaster – Thousands of gallons of deadly chemicals from the damaged Azovstal plant could leak – causing the TOTAL extinction of life in the Sea of Azov and affecting as far as the Mediterranean, experts warn – www.dailymail.co.uk.

So, again — do they not know, or do they just not care?

(Looks like I need to break this up into a couple parts — there’s just too much… and I haven’t even gotten to the truly inept stuff. So I’ve updated the title of this post and will get more information about what’s going on in Mariupol in my next posting.)

I’d mentioned the other day that Katya 2’s parents (Nellie and Anatoly) had gone to Mariupol to get things from Katya’s old apartment. At the time, they’d tried to get into Zhenya’s apartment as well, but couldn’t because of the rubble. I don’t know if they stayed in Mariupol or if they returned, but they were able to get into Zhenya’s apartment on this second visit and we have this video from the inside:

As you can see, between the shelling/bombing and fires, there’s really nothing left. (There could very well have been some looting as well.) I don’t have all the details as yet; Viktoria will be talking to Katya later and will get some more information. For example, we’d sent Zhenya a small safe a couple years ago, and we don’t know what happened to that. Viktoria relayed that it “burned down,” but that doesn’t completely make sense, so hopefully there will be some details.

It’s also rather interesting how Nellie and Anatoly got into Zhenya’s apartment. It wasn’t through the front door because the stairwell rubble had been cleared. No, they actually came from an adjoining apartment — the apartment next to Viktoria’s mother’s apartment — because the walls had been knocked down.

Unfortunately, this video pretty much ends any hope that Viktoria’s family items had survived the Russian invasion. I’d noted previously that after Viktoria’s mother’s passing, Zhenya had taken possession of several family items — photo albums, knickknacks jewelry and some things of significance. It would seem that all those are gone now — destroyed or stolen. Naturally, Viktoria is quite heart-broken by all this.

The BBC has had a couple good articles up over the past couple days. This first one looks at the timeline of Mariupol’s place in the war: Mariupol: Key moments in the siege of the city. It seems to pretty well cover the events.

This second article is definitely a more reflective one, and has some great pictures of what Mariupol used to look like: Mariupol: The 80 days that left a flourishing city in ruins. One of the people interviewed confirms something that I had been thinking. It seemed odd to me that Russia was spending so much effort taking down Mariupol. Grinding it down, destroying the people and the culture, wiping it from the face of the map. If all Russia had wanted was a land-bridge to Crimea, they had control of enough land surrounding the city to do that. So why the intense focus on Mariupol? From the article:

...[W]hile Mariupol flourished, rebel-held Donetsk mouldered. When the rebels returned to Mariupol, Volodymyr, the paramedic, believed they were driven by revenge to destroy the city. "'If we live in sh[*]t, then you will live in sh[*]t as well,'" Volodymyr says they told him at a checkpoint as he finally escaped the city. "They just looked at us and envied how we lived."

I think you kind of see that in the stories of the Russian soldiers who took anything and everything they could get their hands on. Ukraine was becoming the paradise that Russia could only hope to be, and Mariupol was one of the crowing jewels of that success.

I only got to see the start of some of the public works and improvement projects the last time I was there. It’s sad that I didn’t get to see the results, but Viktoria was there a lot last year and has told me that things were looking great. (And that’s from someone who had lived in the city all her life.)

I know that Mariupol will be in Ukrainian hands again, and I hope that’s sooner than not. Russia’s had 8 years to turn the portions of Donetsk and Luhansk that they controlled into examples of the “Russian world,” and perhaps that’s just what they did. If Mariupol is their idea of “rescuing” the people of Ukraine, the sooner they’re gone the better.

One quick add-on: I’m not a big fan of this cartoonist, but in this case I think he nailed it.

Don’t know what was up with my shoulder — felt like I’d whacked it along with some muscle strain, but I don’t think either of those things happened — but it’s doing much better now.

I’ll start with good news: both Katya 2 and Vanya have now been approved to travel to Canada. I didn’t really expect that they would be denied and it’s nice that Canada has acknowledged that. Slight issue to be worked out with Katya’s visa (there was a typo), and they still have to get a special travel document since they don’t have international passports. It will probably be another month-ish before they actually get on a plane, but every step to that end is progress.

Viktoria had been hoping that she could arrange for Artem to come to the US (through the US’s “Uniting for Ukraine” emergency parole program), but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Using a contact in one of the groups she’s been following, Viktoria sent a message to Katya 1 (Artem’s mother) proposing a plan where they and Viktoria would meet at a Russian city just over the Ukrainian border, Viktoria would take custody of Artem, and they’d travel to Poland or a Baltic country to make the arrangements for Artem to come to the US. Katya 1 didn’t agree with the proposal, that’s all off the table for now.

(I think I mentioned it before, but in case not and if you were wondering, Katya 2 and Vanya don’t qualify for the US program because they don’t have those international passports. Canada’s nice in that they are making some exceptions, but the US rules say you have to have legal documents that would let you travel to the US.)

It appears that the siege of Mariupol is now coming to an end. Multi-party negotiations have reached some sort of accord to evacuate the soldiers from Mariupol and then exchange them for captured Russian POWs. Several of the severely wounded soldiers have already been evacuated, and it’s my understanding that more will be evacuated in the coming days (Evacuation of Ukrainian defenders from Azovstal plant – ukrinform.net). There is already movement in Russia to nullify this UN/Red Cross brokered agreement. Some members in the Russian Duma (parliament) are saying that they need to halt the exchange/return of any members of the Azov Regiment, as well as put them to death after they’ve been tried and found guilty (In the aggressor country, they want to ban the exchange of azovstal defenders and for their sake lift the moratorium on execution – News May 17, 2022 – 0629.com.ua).

While it would have been amazing if the soldiers in Azovstal had ultimately prevailed, here’s a look at the sort of thing they were up against.

This was going on all the time. Last week I saw a post noting that 30 or more bombing missions were being carried out on most days. This would mean a bombing run every 20-30 minutes during daylight hours, filled in with artillery and on-shore bombardments. And if conventional munitions weren’t enough, they also had to deal with white phosphorus bombs.

Some views of Mariupol:

This post is video-heavy, but I have to include this one. This video is from someone who was probably checking on people who lived up the stairs from Viktoria’s mother. The video is rather dark, but in the stairwell you can see some of the destruction from the bombing and fire(s). There are little peeks inside an apartment too; there’s not much left to see. Right around the 1:10 mark you will see Viktoria’s mother’s apartment doorway. The outer door frame is lying on the landing (after the landing with the umbrella). It’s definitely not clear what of this apartment might have survived, but things do not look good.

Katya 2’s parents visited Mariupol the other day; it’s dicey to travel anywhere, but since they’re older and have already been “processed” by the Russians, they have generally good mobility. They had hoped to gather things from Katya’s old apartment and from Zhenya’s apartment. The former had been completely ransacked, with anything of potential value or use taken. We don’t know the status of Zhenya’s apartment because they couldn’t get to it; the stairwell was blocked by rubble. They will try to return in a few weeks and hope they can get in then. I suspect that once people are able to make their way into the stairwell, Zhenya’s place will be similarly burgled, so there might not be anything left to recover.

Sorry for the lack of updates; there’s always plenty going on, but I managed to do something to my shoulder a couple days ago, which is making sitting and writing at the computer a bit difficult. So expect some gaps in my posts. Sorry about that.

I’ll definitely keep you informed of any family updates or movements since that’s the overarching purpose of this blog at the moment. There’s been nothing to report on that front; bureaucracies move slowly. And you’ve probably heard the latest big news out of Mariupol — that all the women, children and elderly that had been sheltered at Azovstal have been evacuated (Ukraine war: Civilians now out of Azovstal plant in Mariupol – BBC).

Here are a couple things that caught my eye over the past few days:

• Not Mariupol, but the survival story and descriptions are almost identical: ‘We tried not to watch’ – escapees recount terror of Russian-occupied Izyum – BBC
• It had been an on-again/off-again question about a “Victory Day” parade in Mariupol, depending on who was doing the talking — Russia or the DNR. Russia said no, but apparently the DNR did have some small demonstration. (May 9 in Mariupol. With cries of “Hooray!” the occupiers carried a striped cloth – PHOTOS, VIDEO – News May 9, 2022 – 0629.com.ua)
• I’ve seen assorted reports (I’ll find the links) of occupying forces changing road signs and renaming cities and streets back to their Russian or Soviet versions. Cheap theatrics at best.

You’ve probably heard or seen the news about people being evacuated from Azovstal. It happened over the weekend, and it took a couple days for some of the buses and cars to travel the usual 4-5 trip to Zaporozhia. You probably heard about this because it was getting a lot of coverage, and in truth, it really was a big event. But that’s only the case because Russia has been so intractable about ceasefires and green corridors and letting people leave the city. So I was waiting to see what was actually going to happen. The fact that the UN and the ICRC were actually permitted to arrive in Mariupol was a good sign, but one never knows.

156 people (156 evacuees from Azovstal arrived in Zaporizhzhia – PHOTOS, VIDEO – News May 3, 2022 – 0629.com.ua). That’s the total “official” count of people evacuated from Azovstal over the two-day ceasefire (one and a half days, really, because Russia decided to honor the ceasefire 5 hours later than they’d agreed to). This is out of a purported 1000 people who had been sheltering there. The number also didn’t include any wounded military. Personal cars were invited to join the evacuation, but since there are still an estimated 100,000 people in Mariupol, it would have taken a lot of cars to get them all out. So, yes, it’s good that 156 people were able to make it out. But there are still far more people still trapped.

Remember from last week, when supposed Putin directed forces to just button up Azovstal and stop trying to take it over? Yeah, that never really happened. Not only did the bombing and shelling continue almost unabated, but Russian forces continue to try to take control of the area (Russian troops begin to storm Azovstal plant – ukrinform.net, Video of assault on Azovstal plant released – ukrinform.net). So was that supposed stand-down order just PR, or does Putin not actually command the Russian armed forces? Seems like there’s a disconnect.

Just a little sidenote. I got in touch with a friend from Mariupol — an English teacher named Anna whom I’d met some years ago. She, along with her kids and parents, left Mariupol about the same time as Katya 2 and Vanya. They kind of had to, since their house was on fire. Her descriptions of living in their basement without heat or electricity, running out of food and water, is virtually the same as other reports from there. Fortunately, they’re all safe now, but as Anna noted, their life in Mariupol is gone and they have to start over now.