Mariupol City Hall

Mariupol (, ; uk, Маріу́поль ; russian: Мариу́поль) is a city in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. It is situated on the northern coast (Pryazovia) of the Sea of Azov, at the mouth of the Kalmius River. Prior to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was the tenth-largest city in the country and the second-largest city in Donetsk Oblast, with an estimated population of 425,681 people in January 2022. However, Mariupol has been militarily controlled by Russia since May 2022, and the city's residents are now estimated to number around 100,000, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Historically, the city of Mariupol was a centre for trade and manufacturing, and played a key role in the development of higher education and many businesses while also serving as a coastal resort on the Black Sea. From 1948 to 1989, the city was known as Zhdanov, named after Andrei Zhdanov, a high-ranking official of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; the name was part of a larger effort to rename cities after high-ranking political figures in the Soviet Union. Mariupol was founded on the site of a former encampment for Cossacks, known as Kalmius, and was granted city rights within the Russian Empire in 1778. It played a key role in the Soviet-era industrialization of Ukraine; it was a centre for grain trade, metallurgy, and heavy engineering—including the Illich Iron and Steel Works and the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works.

Beginning on 24 February 2022, the three-month-long Russian siege of Mariupol largely destroyed the city, for which it was given the title "Hero City of Ukraine" by the Ukrainian government. On 16 May 2022, all Ukrainian troops who remained in Mariupol surrendered at Azovstal Iron and Steel Works, as the Russian military secured complete control over the city by 20 May 2022.

History

Pre-settlement

Neolithic burial grounds excavated on the shore of the Sea of Azov date from the end of the third millennium BCE. Over 120 skeletons were discovered, with stone and bone instruments, beads, shell-work, and animal teeth.

Mariupol was founded on the site of a former Cossack encampment known as Kalmius, and granted city rights in 1778. Mariupol played a key role in the industrialization of Ukraine, and was a centre for the grain trade, metallurgy, and heavy engineering, including the Illich Steel & Iron Works and Azovstal.

From the 12th through the 16th century, the area around Mariupol was largely devastated and depopulated by intense conflict between the Crimean Tatars, the Nogay Horde, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Muscovy. By the middle of the 15th century much of the region north of the Black and Azov Seas was annexed by the Crimean Khanate and became a dependency of the Ottoman Empire. East of the Dnieper River a desolate steppe stretched to the Sea of Azov, where lack of water made early settlement precarious.

Being near the Muravsky Trail exposed it to frequent Crimean–Nogai slave raids and plundering by Tatar tribes, preventing permanent settlement and keeping it sparsely populated, or even entirely uninhabited, under Tatar rule. Hence it was known as the Wild Fields or the 'Deserted Plains' (''Campi Deserti'' in Latin).

In this region of Eurasian steppes, the Cossacks emerged as a distinct people in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Below the Dnieper Rapids were the Zaporozhian Cossacks, freebooters organized into small, loosely-knit, and highly mobile groups who were both livestock farmers and nomads. The Cossacks would regularly penetrate the steppe to fish and hunt, as well as for migratory farming and to herd livestock. Their independence from governmental and landowner authority attracted to join them many peasants and serfs fleeing the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Grand Duchy of Moscow.

The Treaty of Constantinople in 1700 further isolated the region, as it stipulated that there should be no settlements or fortifications on the coast of the Azov Sea to the mouth of the Mius River. In 1709, in response to a Cossack alliance with Sweden against Russia, Tsar Peter the Great ordered the liquidation of the Zaporozhian Sich, and their complete and permanent expulsion from the area. In 1733, Russia was preparing for a new military campaign against the Ottoman Empire and therefore allowed the return of the Zaporozhians, although the territory officially belonged to Turkey.N. D. Polons’ka –Vasylenko, "The Settlement of Southern Ukraine (1750–1775)," The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., Inc., 1955, p. 16.

Under the Agreement of Lubny of 1734, the Zaporozhians regained all their former lands. In return, they were forced to serve in the Russian army during wartime. They were also permitted to build a new stockade on the Dnieper River called New Sich, though the terms prohibited them from erecting fortifications. These terms allowed only for living quarters, in Ukrainian called ''kureni''.

Upon their return, the Zaporozhian population in these lands was extremely sparse, and in an effort to establish a measure of control, they introduced a structure of districts or palankas. The nearest district to modern Mariupol was the Kalmius District, but its border did not extend to the mouth of the Kalmius River, although this area had been part of its migratory territory. After 1736, the Zaporozhian Cossacks and the Don Cossacks (whose capital was at nearby Novoazovsk