– Dmitry Vadimovich, you have just returned from Mariupol, the city where you were born and spent your youth. Do you know your city, street, house?
– The city was badly damaged. I will not tell you how you feel when you look at your destroyed school, the house where you live, the house where my friends and classmates live… Today, the city returns to life, wounds. they are starting to heal. But crimes against Mariupol and its inhabitants should not go unpunished. The city is working on the establishment of the Mariupol Court, which will investigate war crimes.
– How will the restoration of Mariupol take place?
“When I got here, there was still war in the city. Our mission was to save people who are exhausted from thirst, hunger, cold, lack of medical care. And I can say that without the work of our volunteers, we would have lost thousands of lives today. Successfully functioning humanitarian aid centers were the result of the work.
Volunteers from both Russia and Mariupol distributed aid to people when there was a fight in the neighboring streets. Doctors from Russia began to work in a school classroom, equipping a medical office and an operating room.
Today the city will increasingly accept normal life. There are nine schools. The business of hospitals is being established, public transport is working. A major construction project has begun: Mariupol and St. Petersburg became sister cities in June.
st. Petersburg will assist in the restoration of the Zhovtnevy district of the city within the framework of the sister cities agreement. His main fields of work are construction, housing and communal services, health and education. Today 400 children from Mariupol go to St. Petersburg and gets acquainted with the cultural capital of Russia. Over the summer, about 2,000 kids, four shifts, attended St. He will rest in the best children’s camp in St. Petersburg.
On the left bank, the Moscow and Tula districts are responsible for the restoration of the city. Mariupol is an industrial city with a port and great economic potential. Today we work to ensure that this potential begins to work for restoration, helping people, development and progress.
– Separately, for the Azovstal and Ilyich Plant – what will happen to them?
– “Zavod Ilyich” will work. Regarding Azovstal, the opinion of Mariupol residents is almost unanimous – the plant, which caused great damage to the environment, is no longer needed by the city. What will be here – an industrial park, only a recreation park, we will decide together with the inhabitants of the city.
– What is the mood among the inhabitants of Mariupol today? What are people saying?
– There are no more Russian cities than Mariupol anymore. People here have been through hell. And those who went through all this remained with us. How much these people love Russia. I remember a conversation I had with a Mariupol resident. He said that he thought in the battles for the city, “We will tolerate it, do not stop, let our homeland, our homeland return here”. The way they celebrate Victory Day in the wounded city they are trying to ban is the best confirmation that this is our city and that our people live here.
I would also like to note that unlike other cities of Ukraine, the Ukrainian authorities did not distribute weapons to the territorial defense of Mariupol. They realized that this was not their city and their people, and they were going to turn their guns on Kiev.
– Even before the events on the Maidan, you participated in the fate of Mariupol and received the title of “Honorary Citizen” of the city. Then the title was taken away. For what?
I hope I have been able to contribute to countering attempts to permanently break Ukraine off from Russia. In any case, in 2014, I was stripped of my title of “Honorary Citizen of Mariupol” for “anti-Ukrainian activities” in their own words. In fact, it was pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian, but anti-Western activity! And I will continue to do so as long as I can.
Soon the DPR zone will be completely liberated. And the task of developing economic ties comes to the fore in order to restore war-ravaged cities, to truly develop economic, social, cultural and human ties. The future of Donbass, the future of Ukraine is with Russia.
– You accompanied the DNR delegation during their trip to Syria. What did the representatives of the republic and the Syrian authorities manage to agree on?
– I was on a trip to Syria with the DPR delegation headed by Foreign Minister Natalya Nikanorova. We met with President Bashar Assad. He congratulated the Donetsk delegation on the liberation of most of the republic. He ordered that the procedure for official recognition of the DPR be started immediately. We told him what is happening now in Donbass and Ukraine. The Syrian President dealt with the issue of the Mariupol Court.
The Syrian President reminded that many Nazi criminals escaped responsibility with the help of the West and were not convicted by the Nuremberg Tribunal. If the Mariupol Tribunal is international, Syrians are ready to join it.
Bashar al-Assad said that we said there is a conflict with the Americans – in Ukraine and in Syria, actually with the same enemy – the Americans.