KYIV, Ukraine: Ukraine on Wednesday accused Russia of planning to hold a military parade in the captured city of Mariupol on May 9 to celebrate victory over the Nazis in World War II.
Kyiv said an official from Russia’s presidential administration had arrived in the strategic southern port city, which has been largely destroyed in Russia’s more than two-month invasion of Ukraine, to oversee plans for the Victory Day Parade.
“Mariupol will become a center of ‘celebration’,” Ukraine’s military intelligence said in a statement on social media.
“The central streets of the city are urgently being cleaned of debris, bodies and unexploded ordnance.”
Mariupol is one of the most battered cities in Ukraine. A group of Ukrainian forces are still holding out in its Azovstal steel plant.
“A large-scale propaganda campaign is under way. Russians will be shown stories about the ‘joy’ of locals on meeting the occupiers,” it said.
Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko later told Ukrainian television there were ongoing “works” in the city, as if the Russians were preparing for something.
“They are removing signs of the crimes they have committed,” he said.
The Ukrainian military on Tuesday said Russian troops had launched an offensive to rout troops inside Azovstal shortly after the United Nations and Red Cross confirmed the evacuation of more than 100 civilians from the site.
The Kremlin denied Russia was storming the plant on Wednesday, but Boichenko said there was “heavy fighting” there and that city officials had “lost contact” with the troops inside with no way of knowing “what’s going on, whether they are safe or not.”
In a briefing on the army’s plan for May 9, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made no mention of a celebratory march in Mariupol.
He said parades would take place in 28 cities, involving some 65,000 people, 2,400 pieces of military hardware and more than 400 aircraft.
Russians celebrate Victory Day every year on May 9 with military parades and public events commemorating the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
Moscow has said the aim of its massive invasion was to “de-militarise” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine.
Ukraine says Russia planning WWII parade in Mariupol
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Ukraine says Russia planning WWII parade in Mariupol
- Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko told Ukrainian television there were ongoing ‘works’ in the city, as if the Russians were preparing for something
- Russians celebrate Victory Day every year on May 9 with military parades and public events commemorating the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Germany
Afghan returnees in Bamiyan struggle despite new homes
- More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan: Sitting in his modest home beneath snow-dusted hills in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province, Nimatullah Rahesh expressed relief to have found somewhere to “live peacefully” after months of uncertainty.
Rahesh is one of millions of Afghans pushed out of Iran and Pakistan, but despite being given a brand new home in his native country, he and many of his recently returned compatriots are lacking even basic services.
“We no longer have the end-of-month stress about the rent,” he said after getting his house, which was financed by the UN refugee agency on land provided by the Taliban authorities.
Originally from a poor and mountainous district of Bamiyan, Rahesh worked for five years in construction in Iran, where his wife Marzia was a seamstress.
“The Iranians forced us to leave” in 2024 by “refusing to admit our son to school and asking us to pay an impossible sum to extend our documents,” he said.
More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), as neighboring Iran and Pakistan stepped up deportations.
The Rahesh family is among 30 to be given a 50-square-meter (540-square-foot) home in Bamiyan, with each household in the nascent community participating in the construction and being paid by UNHCR for their work.
The families, most of whom had lived in Iran, own the building and the land.
“That was crucial for us, because property rights give these people security,” said the UNHCR’s Amaia Lezertua.
Waiting for water
Despite the homes lacking running water and being far from shops, schools or hospitals, new resident Arefa Ibrahimi said she was happy “because this house is mine, even if all the basic facilities aren’t there.”
Ibrahimi, whose four children huddled around the stove in her spartan living room, is one of 10 single mothers living in the new community.
The 45-year-old said she feared ending up on the street after her husband left her.
She showed AFP journalists her two just-finished rooms and an empty hallway with a counter intended to serve as a kitchen.
“But there’s no bathroom,” she said. These new houses have only basic outdoor toilets, too small to add even a simple shower.
Ajay Singh, the UNHCR project manager, said the home design came from the local authorities, and families could build a bathroom themselves.
There is currently no piped water nor wells in the area, which is dubbed “the dry slope” (Jar-e-Khushk).
Ten liters of drinking water bought when a tanker truck passes every three days costs more than in the capital Kabul, residents said.
Fazil Omar Rahmani, the provincial head of the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation Affairs, said there were plans to expand the water supply network.
“But for now these families must secure their own supply,” he said.
Two hours on foot
The plots allocated by the government for the new neighborhood lie far from Bamiyan city, which is home to more than 70,000 people.
The city grabbed international attention in 2001, when the Sunni Pashtun Taliban authorities destroyed two large Buddha statues cherished by the predominantly Shia Hazara community in the region.
Since the Taliban government came back to power in 2021, around 7,000 Afghans have returned to Bamiyan according to Rahmani.
The new project provides housing for 174 of them. At its inauguration, resident Rahesh stood before his new neighbors and addressed their supporters.
“Thank you for the homes, we are grateful, but please don’t forget us for water, a school, clinics, the mobile network,” which is currently nonexistent, he said.
Rahmani, the ministry official, insisted there were plans to build schools and clinics.
“There is a direct order from our supreme leader,” Hibatullah Akhundzada, he said, without specifying when these projects will start.
In the meantime, to get to work at the market, Rahesh must walk for two hours along a rutted dirt road between barren mountains before he can catch a ride.
Only 11 percent of adults found full-time work after returning to Afghanistan, according to an IOM survey.
Ibrahimi, meanwhile, is contending with a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) walk to the nearest school when the winter break ends.
“I will have to wake my children very early, in the cold. I am worried,” she said.
