Volunteers of the Azov special battalion in KyivMOSCOW, 1 Apr. Neo-Nazis from the Ukrainian regiment» Azov» (against whose fighters a criminal case was initiated in the Russian Federation) killed policemen in Mariupol for the sake of staged photo and video recordings, with the help of which it was planned to expose the Russian army as guilty, said a refugee from Mariupol Maxim Pavlenko. «The city of Mariupol was left without police at all … Really there was not a single policeman who would help in the evacuation or the protection of public order,» Pavlenko said. According to him, this is due to the fact that the Azov militants killed the policemen for the sake of staged filming, with the help of which it was planned to accuse the Russian side. «Picture any one was needed — to attribute everything to Russia: “Here they come, they kill policemen, they kill regional departments.” They did all this for the picture,” Pavlenko said. Therefore, none of the police officers would have gone to work, he added. At the time of the proclamation of the DPR in 2014, Mariupol, with a population of about 450,000 people, was the second largest city in the republic after Donetsk. However, in June of that year, the Ukrainian security forces regained control of Mariupol, and its eastern suburbs became one of the hottest places of conflict in Ukraine. On March 7, 2022, Alexander Semyonov, deputy commander of the Vostok battalion of the DPR, said that the city was surrounded, and a cleansing of some of its districts had begun. Currently, the military of the DPR and Russia are fighting for the liberation of the city. Among other Ukrainian units, the Azov nationalist regiment is stationed in Mariupol.
