Kiev fires official after Mariupol revelations
A Ukrainian official who revealed the extent to which former residents have returned to the now-Russian city of Mariupol has been fired.
According to a Telegram post by the Kiev-assigned city Mayor Vadim Boychenko on Saturday, his adviser Pyotr Andryushchenko has been stripped of his position and will no longer perform his duties as the official speaker of the Mariupol City Council.
The Black Sea city in the Donetsk People’s Republic has been under Russian control since May 2022, when it was captured following an 85-day battle that left much of the city in ruins. The region voted to join Russia later that same year, along with the regions of Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye.
Earlier this month, Andryushchenko made headlines after claiming that a third of the people who had lived in Mariupol under Ukrainian rule and fled to Kiev-controlled territories amid the fighting have returned to the city due to inadequate support from the government in Kiev.
“The reason is the lack of sufficient support and solutions to the housing issue on the territory of Ukraine. People simply have nowhere to live. Even if they work, there is not enough money to afford rent,” Andryushchenko told the broadcaster Mi-Ukraine.
His comments caught the attention of a number of Ukrainian officials who accused the government in Kiev of not doing enough to assist people displaced due to the conflict.
Maksim Tkachenko, the people’s deputy from the Servant of the People party, recently claimed that 150,000 internally displaced people have moved to former Ukrainian territories that are now Russian, including around 70,000 to Mariupol alone. He later backtracked, saying his words were an “emotional assumption.”
Boychenko himself acknowledged earlier this month that around 30% of Mariupol’s residents who left the city after the start of the conflict have now returned. In his post announcing the firing of Andryushchenko, Boychenko did not comment on whether the move had anything to do with the adviser’s statements on people returning to Mariupol.
Earlier this week, Irina Vereshchuk, the deputy head of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s office, attempted to refute the claims of people moving to former Ukrainian territories en masse, saying there are no confirmed statistics on this. Vereshchuk called the claims “hype for the sake of good headlines,” but acknowledged that the government is not doing enough to support the displaced, as it currently lacks resources “due to war.”
After the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, the Ukrainian authorities paid each internally displaced person 2,000 hryvnia ($50) a month. However, in March this year, most of the payments were cut, and now only pensioners, disabled people, children with disabilities, orphans, and children deprived of parental care are eligible to receive the funds.
