Mariupol

Mariupol is a port city, of approximately 500,000 people, in Ukraine's Donbas region. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine the city was the site of prolonged fighting.

The city was first attacked by Russian forces in early March, 2022. By mid-May, most of the city was in Russian hands, but a pocket of Ukrainian resistance remained at and around the large Azovstal steel plant.

In March, 2022, there was a controversy over the destruction of a maternity hospital. When the western press published pictures of wounded women in the last stages of pregnancy, fleeing the hospital, Russian spokesmen denied attacking the hospital. They claimed women, like Mariana Vishegirskaya, weren't expecting, and that their wounds were merely makeup. They later acknowledged attacking the building, but claimed it had stopped being a hospital, and had been transformed into a barracks for neo-Nazis.