By Galina Korol | 2025-04-10

KYIV -- Almost three years after Mariupol fell to Russian invaders, the Ukrainian seaport is enduring widespread poverty and deprivation of life's necessities.

Residents still lack housing, medical care, water and electricity, and they say they face "total control" by Russian occupiers.

'Hopeless, despondent'

From March to mid-May 2022, fierce battles raged over Mariupol.

The defenders held out for 86 days, but Russia nearly wiped the city off the face of the earth with air strikes, artillery and a blockade. Tens of thousands of inhabitants were killed.

"According to the city council's estimates, the death toll is more than 20,000," said Anna Murlykina, a Mariupol journalist and editor-in-chief of 0629, a local news site.

"And that's only up to March 16, 2022, but the war and blockade of the city continued until May 2022," she told Kontur. "After that, [residents] were still dying from lack of medicine and water. In other words, it's definitely tens of thousands."

Murlykina now lives in a government-controlled part of Ukraine but has maintained contact with residents of occupied Mariupol for the past three years.

"Fear has settled in Mariupol ... [locals] are afraid even to speak. The repression is intensifying. There is total control at every step," she said.

Survivors of the ordeal have been left alone with their trauma.

"Some [residents] still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. There is a complete lack of psychological help in the city," said Murlykina. "[They] are hopeless, despondent."

An 'illusion of a revival'

After the last Ukrainian fighter left the Azovstal steel mill, the Russians declared their occupation of the city and began trumpeting propaganda about the restoration of Mariupol, which they themselves had destroyed.

"In mid-summer 2022, mobile internet appeared and [the Russians] began widely spreading videos about 'how things have become good in Mariupol,'" Pani Runa, a Mariupol blogger who has relocated to western Ukraine, told Kontur.

But in reality "the city is in ruins; [inhabitants] are surviving as best they can," she said.

Runa still conceals her real name to protect herself and her friends who stayed behind. Her blog, which she has maintained for more than two years, describes real life in Mariupol and criticizes the occupation authorities.

"[Russians] are denying thousands of [residents] the reestablishment of the deeds to their homes," said Murlykina. "[They] can't get anything done -- not in Russian courts, with Russian notaries or with Russian officials."

"No one I know [who needs new housing] has obtained housing in three years," Runa said. "[The occupation authorities] usually change the address. We once had Nakhimov Avenue, but they made it Chernomorskaya Lane, and it's like your home never existed."

"You can watch dozens of online videos of [residents] forced to live literally in ruins," she added.

On March 15, Ukrainian official Petro Andriushchenko's Telegram channel published a conversation with a man who gives a tour of the high-rise building where he and five other holdouts live.

The building has only walls but not everywhere; instead of ceilings, it has holes overhead. Someone has installed new doors in some of the apartments.

"[Russian occupiers] started some work and then abandoned everything," the man said.

Today's Mariupol is more the "illusion of a revival," Murlykina said.

The occupation authorities painted the apartment buildings that burned up, she said. They fixed only the facades and left everything else to the residents of these buildings.

"They invite [locals] to do repairs at their own expense, but the repairs are so extensive you have to do everything," Murlykina said, listing "sewage, electricity and heating" as the priorities no ordinary tenant could fix.

"They take beautiful pictures in the very same locations -- downtown, at the waterfront, in a few new neighborhoods. But it's worth looking down the side streets; there are still ruins there," she said.

Privately owned real estate, which numbered 43,000 buildings before the war, has been destroyed, and the Russian government is not allocating funds to rebuild it.

Lack of water and 'toxic zone'

"Utilities are a separate gate to hell," said Runa.

If a pipe bursts in an apartment building, a repair crew will arrive in about three days or perhaps not at all, she said. After years of this negligence, the city's sewage system constantly leaks. The occupiers are doing almost nothing about it.

Moreover, they charge for bottled drinking water and provide non-potable water on a restricted schedule: three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening.

"Mariupol is still being fed by the Starokrymskoe Reservoir," said Andriushchenko, a former adviser to the mayor of Mariupol and the director of the Center for the Study of the Occupation. "It's not a reservoir that is capable of supplying Mariupol on a permanent basis. It was always a backup."

"Water from there is essentially industrial water and cannot be used for cooking. Even after boiling, its quality is very questionable," he told Kontur.

The reservoir soon will run out completely, warned Andriushchenko.

"From what [observers] see ... somewhere from August to December 2024 the water level [in the reservoir] dropped by about 5-7 meters," he said. "And this winter the level dropped by more than 10 meters."

The occupation authorities have not done any water system maintenance for three years, and as a result, future attempts to get water will likely lead to disaster, he said.

"They will start trying to take water from natural springs ... [which] are directly linked to Azovstal," said Andriushchenko.

The local steel mill used to have a coke production facility that stored waste securely. However, the Russians bombed all of Azovstal during combat, and all the harmful substances rose into the air and then settled on the soil.

"This toxic zone is ultimately in the soil, which means it is in the groundwater," said Andriushchenko.

"The consequences will be terrible in terms of chronic diseases. Especially for children, especially for pregnant women," he added.

'Slowly dying'

Before the war, Mariupol was an industrial city. It had metallurgical enterprises and a port, and related industries provided thousands of jobs.

But today, "there are only two options for work in the city: construction and services," said Murlykina, referring to low-level retail and similar work.

Migrant workers do most of the construction. Locals take the most physically demanding jobs, with six-day workweeks and 12-hour shifts.

The average monthly salary is 20,000 RUB (€213), but the cost of living is high.

"If someone works 12 hours a day at a construction site, he can earn about 100,000 RUB (€1,065) [per month], but he ... kills himself at work for this money," said Murlykina.

Meanwhile, little recreation exists outside working hours.

"The only events held there now are some rallies, forums, festivals à la United Russia, something like that," said Murlykina, referring to the Russian ruling party. "With tricolors [Russian flags]."

Residents complain their lives have shrunken to a cycle of working and then drinking at home, she said.

"It's not safe for women to walk the streets. [Parents] don't allow girls to go for walks without an escort," said Murlykina.

"It's just a catastrophe, because these residents [who remained there under Russian occupation] are simply slowly dying there," she said.