Night in Mariupol. Putin’s first time in occupied Ukraine: "It’s a paradise now"

Kramatorsk – It was a big theater for local spectators. Here is Mariupol, more beautiful than before. After the visit to Crimea the President Wladimir Putin He showed Russia first and then the world the city he is having rebuilt after destroying it. A tour that has outraged Ukrainians and beyond. During the siege of Mariupol, thousands of people disappeared, were killed by bombing, executed in the streets, starved and died of thirst. Thousands were scattered in their flight, some going west, others east, persuaded to cross the border and ending up who knows where. Not in Siberia, but almost.

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But one stayed and waited longingly for his arrival on the evening of curfew in the square with the children’s games, the gardens, the little trees that had just been planted. Nikolai Lotkovhis son Dmitry, daughter-in-law Ekaterina, friend Alexei Bondarenko welcomed him into their newly fitted kitchen. And there the residents of Mariupol in exile rioted: “Dmitry and Ekaterina are looters, we saw how they looted houses during the bombing. It’s just them.” If Ukraine can retake the city, the Lotkovs will be the first to be lynched and their new refrigerator will be thrown out the window.

There is only one precedent for so much provocation. The visit of Adolf Hitler in Mariupol, December 16, 1941. Having occupied it, he happily had his picture taken while walking. He had gone there two months ago Benito Mussolini, to greet the Italians who guarded the airport, all ignoring the risk of the expedition desired by the Duce, which ended in the tragedy of the retreat from the Don. Now the comparison is clear. Hitler equals Putin. And the first exit to the territories occupied in February 2022 takes place in the city, symbol of many massacres and fierce resistance, with the Azov battalion barricaded in the steel plant. But the story on offer to the Russians is different, as evidenced by the dialogue between the President (still driving his Toyota SUV) and the Deputy Prime Minister Marat Chuznullin, who explains to him: “These are the buildings that were destroyed by fleeing Ukrainians and shot down by their tanks. We rebuild them. Here are eight new ones, with four floors”. And Putin: “Nice Neighborhoods”.

The man speaks very little (in a 30 minute video) leading many to think that Putin is one of the legendary doubles due to the risk that a fake pro-Russian will try to kill him right there. But Mariupol is now a Russified city, and while it doesn’t show up in the footage, an extraordinary security plan ensured all went well. Then visit the Lotkovs, who say: “We had lost everything, and now she gave us paradise!”, but which does not provide drinking water. The mayor in exile was right Vadim Boychenko, when he said that the aqueduct is still destroyed and there is only rotted water in the deposits. In fact, in the kitchen visited, the drinking can is clearly visible, from the one distributed by the army.

But what will it be compared to the reconstruction plan shown in the center of the square: the before and after, the ruins and the colored houses. “We envisage structures from 1820 and build three districts. And we built 35 kilometers of roads in the city, plus a four-lane road connecting Mariupol with Donetsk,” explains Chusnullin. The scene then switches to the Philharmonie, where, however, the stage on which the gabions for the Azov prisoners were erected in August cannot be seen because the trial has not yet begun. We can’t see the other theater either, the one that was bombed out with 600 women and children in the basement, almost all of them dead down there. The fact is that the place, although demolished down to the facade, smells horribly of death. The bodies are still under the rubble, a river of cement has covered everything, but the smell is very strong, no one can approach.

Finally a visit to the then bombed Fmba hospital, we remember the photos of a pregnant woman on a stretcher dying. And from a disturbed girl who is later accused of being an actress. Chuznullin: “Everything was undermined here, even the medical equipment”. And finally Putin speaks: “These are the Nazis. Normal people don’t do these things, Bandera followers do” (Stepan Bandera was a famous Ukrainian nationalist). But there was more to pay homage to the statue celebrating the Soviet victory over the Nazis. And take a trip to the already restored Yacht Club. Only then did he go to Rostov for a briefing with the defense minister Sergei Shoigu, to end the historic day marked by many curses. From Kiev they commented as follows: “As befits a thief, Putin visited Mariupol in Ukraine under cover of night. First, it’s safer. Second, the darkness allows him to highlight what he wants to show and hide the city completely destroyed by his army and the few survivors.”