Russia intensified its use of Mariupol's seized seaport throughout 2025, framing illegal appropriation as "restoration" while the city's social fabric collapses around its remaining residents, Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service (SZRU) reported on 18 January.
The pattern extends beyond industrial infrastructure. In December, Russia reopened the Mariupol Drama Theater—the building where Russian bombs killed an estimated 600 civilians sheltering inside in March 2022—as a venue for Russian fairy tales and children's holiday events. Workers used chlorine bleach to mask the smell of decaying bodies during reconstruction. Together, the port and theater reveal Russia's systematic approach: extract economic value, erase Ukrainian identity, and rebrand war crimes as development.
Port integration circumvents sanctions
Occupation authorities have replaced Ukrainian standards with Russian ones at the port, erasing Ukrainian jurisdiction and opening the facility to foreign vessels. Ukrainian intelligence assesses this as an attempt to create an illusion of "legality" and circumvent international sanctions.
Plans to deepen the shipping channel and expand transshipment capacity confirm Moscow's intention to transform Mariupol into a key logistics hub for temporarily occupied territories, the SZRU stated. The port serves as a critical node connecting occupied eastern Ukraine with Crimea and mainland Russia.
Residents face housing confiscation, suspended services
The contrast between infrastructure investment and civilian welfare is stark. School meals have been suspended across the city due to lack of funding from occupation authorities. Residents who lost homes during the 2022 siege have waited years for promised compensation. Instead of rebuilding, authorities are constructing expensive high-rise apartments with mortgages that displaced Mariupol residents cannot afford.
A new legal mechanism has simplified the seizure of "ownerless" housing—apartments are being confiscated en masse from owners who died, fled, or lost their documents during the siege. Those who escaped Russian occupation now face losing their property to Russian settlers.
The city also serves as a military training ground for Russian personnel, the intelligence service noted. When residents appeal to occupation authorities with complaints, the response is uniform: "Wait."
Trophy, not community
"For Russia, Mariupol is not a city or a community, but a trophy and expendable material," the SZRU assessment concluded.
Under propaganda about "reconstruction," Russia demonstrates what Ukrainian intelligence calls "the complete degradation of its state policy"—one built on disregard for human life, cynical exploitation of captured territories, and contempt for international law.
Mariupol endured a devastating 86-day siege in 2022 before falling to Russian forces. Some estimates place the civilian death toll above 60,000. Over 900 Azov regiment defenders who surrendered at the Azovstal steel plant remain in Russian captivity.
