Russia deploys 100,000 citizens in occupied Melitopol, aiming to ‘extinguish Ukrainian resistance’
Russian occupation authorities brought about 100,000 Russian citizens to the temporarily occupied Melitopol to suppress Ukrainian resistance, Mayor Ivan Fedorov reported on Telegram on Jan. 30.
150,000 people lived in Melitopol before the full-scale Russian invasion. Within six months after the occupation, more than half of Melitopol’s residents left the city for the government-controlled territory and abroad, leaving 60,000-70,000 people in the city, said the official.
“Since then, the city has been flooded with freeloaders and migrant workers from Russia,” he said.
“According to a local resident, the population has become larger than it was before the occupation, exceeding 150,000. Mostly, these are the people who arrived.”
Fedorov believes that the Russian administration is trying to “extinguish the Ukrainian resistance, which continues in the temporarily occupied territories” and change the gene pool to make life more difficult for locals.
Earlier, he reported that the Russian administration conducts telephone surveys of local residents on socio-political topics in the temporarily occupied territories.
Ukraine’s National Resistance Center (NRC) reported in December 2023 that Russian administrations in the occupied territories persist in their efforts to enhance control over the seized lands and their inhabitants. As part of this endeavor, Russians are attempting to identify as many members of the Ukrainian underground as possible.
The NRC said at the end of November that after Ukraine’s successful attacks on Crimea, “spy mania” had taken hold on the peninsula.
In a move reminiscent of the great forced migrations of Stalinist Russia, Russia has shipped over 100,000 Central Asians to the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, NRC reported on Nov. 29.
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