Destroyed buildings of Mariupol. Archival photoMARIUPOL, April 28Peaceful life is gradually returning to Mariupol, markets and a gas station have already started operating, a RIA Novosti correspondent reports. Stationary trading floors are not currently working due to damage from the fighting, but people organize trade along the avenues and near the stalls. Food, cigarettes and personal hygiene items are on sale. You can pay with both the Ukrainian hryvnia and the Russian ruble. Groups of people appeared in Mariupol who put the city in order: they sweep the streets, remove dangling wires and parts of cars from the roads, a RIA Novosti correspondent reports. At the time of the proclamation of the DPR in 2014, Mariupol about 450 thousand people was the second city of the republic after Donetsk, but in June of the same year, the Ukrainian security forces regained control of Mariupol. On March 7, 12 days after the start of the Russian special operation to demilitarize Ukraine, the deputy commander of the Vostok battalion, Alexander Semyonov, announced that the city was surrounded, and a cleansing of its individual districts had begun. On April 16, the official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, announced that the entire city territory had been cleared of the Ukrainian army, foreign mercenaries and neo-Nazis from the Azov regiment (against whose militants a criminal case was initiated in Russia). The remnants of the Ukrainian group are blocked at the Azovstal metallurgical plant.
Sowing campaign has begun on farmland near Mariupol
