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Donetsk separatist leader: First cargo ship leaves Mariupol since Russia took the city
The Russian-backed separatist leader of the Ukrainian breakaway region of Donetsk said on Tuesday (May 31), a ship has left the Ukrainian port of Mariupol for the first time since Russia took the city and is headed east to Russia with a load of metal.
Ukraine said the shipment of metal to Russia from Mariupol, whose capture gave Moscow an overland bridge linking mainland Russia and pro-Russian separatist territory to annexed-Crimea, amounted to looting.
Denis Pushilin, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, wrote on the Telegram messaging app: “Today 2,500 tons of hot-rolled sheets left the port of Mariupol. The ship headed for (the Russian city of) Rostov.”
The Ukrainian city of Mariupol is now in Russian hands, after more than two months of bitter fighting and constant Russian shelling that destroyed massive swaths of the city and killed thousands of civilians
Russia seized full control of Mariupol earlier this month when more than 2,400 Ukrainian fighters surrendered at the besieged Azovstal steelworks. Russia said last week that the port had been demined and was open again to commercial vessels.
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For months, Ukrainians had celebrated the small number of soldiers who managed to keep the city from falling into Russian hands, despite near-constant shelling and Russia's firepower advantage.
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