Mariupol residents waited in long queues on Tuesday (April 26) to register for their pensions in the devastated port city, with many of those who remain in the city running out of money.
The southern Ukrainian city, once home to 400,000 people, has been the scene of fierce fighting between the Russian and the Ukrainian forces.
Large swathes of the city have been heavily damaged during the conflict.
“First and foremost, we want quietness and tranquility; we want everyone to calm down – children, elderly people,” Mariupol resident Natalia Marusetchenko, 62, who was standing in the queue, told Reuters. “We’ll already agree to anything.”
The pensions are said to be distributed by the administration of the self-proclaimed Donetsk people’s republic.
On April 21, Russia declared victory in Mariupol, although an unknown number of Ukrainian fighters have held out in a vast underground complex below the Azovstal steelworks.
Capturing Mariupol, the main port in the Donbas region, is seen as a strategic prize for Russia, connecting territory held by pro-Russian separatists in the east with the Crimean peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014.
(Reuters)