By Galina Korol | 2023-11-16

KYIV -- The Kremlin is intent on erasing Mariupol's Ukrainian past and turning it into a Russian city by attracting Russian migrants with cheap mortgages.

Russian officials have developed a plan to add 300,000 Russians to the Mariupol population by 2035, according to a report by the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

The population increase is supposed to come "through migration from Russia," the ISW wrote in a report dated August 20, citing a Russian document obtained by the Ukrainian Resistance Center.

Ukrainian officials have long accused Russia of trying to demographically transform the Ukrainian territory it occupies.

"With this goal the Russian government has initiated a large-scale resettlement of a large number of people -- primarily low income -- from different ethnic groups from far-flung regions of Russia," Hanna Maliar wrote on Telegram on April 26, when she was still a Ukrainian deputy defense minister.

Russian occupiers simultaneously reduce the number of Ukrainians in those areas by deporting them on various pretexts to Russia, she said, adding they especially target suspected supporters of Kyiv.

At this point it is hard to say precisely how many inhabitants Mariupol still has because the occupying regime is operating there.

Only about 80,000 residents, mostly retirees, remain, according to Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the pre-occupation Mariupol mayor.

Before the February 2022 invasion, the city had about 430,000 residents.

"Given the conditions they're living under, with a mortality rate of up to 400 people a week, I can tell you that in three years not a lot of Mariupol residents will be left -- 20,000 to 30,000," Andriushchenko told Kontur.

"They're pushing Mariupol residents out of the city because they're Ukrainians," Andriushchenko added.

The Russians consider even Ukrainians who took Russian passports to be "traitors in waiting," he said.

They "are very close to accomplishing" the expulsion of Mariupol's Ukrainian population, he added.

System rigged for Russians

The overall plan to bring Russians to Mariupol involves favorable mortgages for military officers, employees of Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations, and instructors for members of other professions whom the Russian government is actively recruiting to go work in the occupied territories.

Since March of this year, there has been an advertising campaign going on in Siberia and Central Russia touting low-interest mortgages in the so-called "new regions" of Russia.

The mortgage program clearly is meant for Russian newcomers, not for current residents of the occupied territories, said Andriushchenko.

It is unlikely to accept Ukrainian applicants, who are set up to fail, he said.

"You need to be a Russian citizen and acquire a passport, and essentially you theoretically have the right to get one, but ... you need to have a credit history, which guarantees that you really will make the payments."

Pre-occupation Mariupol residents were likely to use their credit cards only in nearby cities like Berdyansk that Russia occupied in 2022, he noted.

"How are [those Mariupol inhabitants] going to have a credit history as Russian citizens that goes back several years?" he said.

Meanwhile, Russian construction companies have begun rebuilding the city, and the Russian Ministry of Defense is in charge, according to open-source information and Russian media reports.

Construction is ahead of schedule, say propaganda channels.

However, the main goal of the building frenzy is to get one's hands on the Kremlin's money, Mykola Osychenko, an activist and president of Mariupol TV, said in an interview with the Ukrainian publication Svoi in January.

The amount of Russian Defense Ministry construction funding for Mariupol that could be stolen, embezzled, misused or diverted is "colossal," he said, saying that "about a month ago it was 18 billion RUB [$202.5 million]."

The construction companies are operating risk-free because the lavish government funding liberates them from having to worry about sales of their new buildings, Andriushchenko told Kontur.

Those buildings are both shoddy and expensive, he said.

Prices start at 96,000 RUB ($1,080) per square meter.

The Russians are marketing "the Nevsky district as an elite place to live, but if you compare it to Ukrainian developers' programs, it's at the ultrabudget level," he pointed out.

'Putin's concrete chicken coops'

The Russians' demolition of a beloved local monument shows their agenda toward Mariupol's Ukrainian population, Andriushchenko said.

He pointed to the Clock House, a monument that included an apartment building, which Russians razed in January.

Occupying authorities never kept their many promises to give the Clock House's former residents apartments in a new building on its site, he said.

"Many people -- around 35 families who were living there -- are homeless now," he said.

Now, the authorities are not offering anything more than "an apartment in Vostochny district, which is on the opposite side of the city ... about 10 to 13km from where their rightful apartments were."

The apartments now rising in Vostochny are "[Russian President Vladimir] Putin's concrete chicken coops," he said.

Those who lived in Vostochny before the Russians invaded are also going through their own woes now.

They include a man named Gennady, whose last name and exact location are withheld to protect his family, which is still in Mariupol.

The apartment building where his family had lived since the early 1990s went up in flames during the fighting. His family's apartment escaped damage because it was on an unburned side.

Occupying authorities broke their vow to fix the building and then razed it. By this autumn, even the foundation was gone.

"No one is promising any housing or saying anything," he said. "They gave some compensation to my mother, but it's so little it's a joke."

The discriminatory housing policies have aroused outrage in Mariupol, drawing the notice of sympathetic Russians who came to Mariupol to help the war-stricken population.

"This is making people very angry. I've never seen such a strong mood of protest sentiment among them," said Roman Yuneman, an independent Russian politician and director of the Obschestvo.Buduscheye (Society.Future) movement.

"They're now witnessing the actions of the new regional administration, including the city administration, and they're in shock," he said in an interview with ForPost that was posted on YouTube on October 30.