50-60 thousand people remain in Melitopol, 5% of them are collaborators – the Mayor of Melitopol

KATERYNA TYSHCHENKO – MONDAY, 25 JULY 2022, 17:05

According to the calculations of the city authorities, 50-60 thousand citizens remain on the territory of the occupied city of Melitopol in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, while the proportion of collaborators is less than 5%.

Source:  Ivan Fedorov, the Mayor of Melitopol, in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine

Quote from Fedorov: "Of course, there is a certain proportion of collaborators, but it is less than 5%. In the majority of cases, those people who remained in the city do not have relatives in other oblasts of Ukraine or abroad to whom they could go. There are those who have bedridden parents, relatives who need help and who can’t be left alone."

Details: The mayor noted that about 80% of the city's residents are without work, without means of livelihood, and are living on savings.

"There is no economy in Melitopol now. Only food industry factories are working – bread factories, dairies. These are the ones who feed the people. But on 1 August, the ‘H-hour’ is coming for them too: the Russian invaders say that whoever does not register and formalise their activity according to their rules must stop work, otherwise all their property will be taken from them," Fedorov said.

He also reported that there has been no gas supply in the city for the past 2 weeks due to damage to the gas pipeline as a result of hostilities. Also, a week and a half ago, the Russian army captured all the city's power grid divisions, and almost all employees refused to cooperate.

"If an incident happens now, there will be no electricity in the city. And if there is no electricity, then there will be no water and there will be collapse," he predicts.edorov said that pro-Ukrainian rallies are not taking place in the city now, as many of their organisers have been captured by the occupiers. However, the level of collaboration with the occupiers in the city is low.

"Not a single deputy mayor, not a single manager, not a single department head agreed to cooperate. Only one director of a utility company agreed to cooperate. None of our doctors agreed to go to work in the enemy's military hospital. Teachers – only 300 out of 2,800 education employees agreed to cooperate, but mostly they are technical specialists," the mayor said.

According to preliminary data, more than 50 residents of Melitopol are being held captive by the Russians, Fedorov noted. Over 500 people have been captured during the 5 months of the full-scale war.

The mayor said that it is currently possible to leave the occupied city. "The queue to leave Vasylivka, on the line of hostilities, is more than a thousand people long. People spend two or three nights there, then leave," he said.

Fedorov also noted that he does not know of specific examples when Melitopol residents were sent to Russia against their will.

"But there are examples when people tried to leave on their own through the temporarily occupied Crimea, then to EU countries, but the Russians detained them, convicted them and put them in prison for 5 years. There are such cases and facts. There are no cases of forced deportation to Russia yet," the mayor said.

Note: Since 26 February, Melitopol has been temporarily occupied by Russian troops.