Medals, road-signs and statues — these are some of the early symbols of Russia’s seizure of parts of southern Ukraine, and especially Mariupol.
The leader of self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and a senior official in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party awarded medals “For the Liberation of Mariupol” this week.
“The liberation of this city is a joint victory for the armies of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Russian Federation,” Pushilin posted on his Telegram channel.
The DPR has been hard at work changing road-signs from Ukrainian into Russian, especially those at the entrance to Mariupol. The Ministry of Transport of the DPR promised Thursday that work on the replacement of road signs in the liberated territories will continue.
A strange statue has also gone up in Mariupol, depicting an elderly woman grasping the Soviet flag.
The Russians have “opened a monument made of shit and sticks to an old lady with a flag on Warriors Liberators Square, which they stubbornly call the Leninist Komsomol,” said Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the elected mayor of Mariupol.
He also spoke bitterly about the rising number of Russian officials visiting Mariupol, including the Sergey Kiriyenko, a senior official at the Kremlin, describing them as “curators of Mariupol’s integration into Russia.”
On the road to Zaporizhzhia from Mariupol — a road most of those trying to escape Mariupol must take — is the town of Tokmak, also under Russian occupation.
