Today Melitopol is one of the administrative centers of the self-proclaimed Russian government in the South. Therefore, the invaders are trying to create a beautiful picture of a living city.. But the reality is contrary to what supporters of the Putin regime are broadcasting on their Russian television.. What is it, reality?

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Rashist troops captured Melitopol in the first days of a full-scale invasion. Today the inhabitants of the city are confused. They are tired of daily propaganda, of the fear of saying too much, of the unknown and the atrocities committed by the occupiers. And then, after the liberation of the Kherson region, the terror of the invaders against civilians intensified sharply.

“Orcs who managed to escape from the right-bank Kherson region behave like animals. They are angry, hungry, demoralized, therefore, in Melitopol and throughout the Zaporozhye region, the number of cases of looting has sharply increased. People are taken prisoner, raped. Unfortunately, the consequences will become known only after the liberation of the territories,” said ZN. UA Mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov.

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Because of the danger, 50-60% of Melitopol residents left their homes. Now in the temporarily occupied city there are up to 60 thousand inhabitants (before the war there were almost 150 thousand people). Russian invaders take advantage of the moment and move into empty buildings in Melitopol and the occupied part of the Zaporozhye region.

But this is not the only problem of Melitopol residents.. Despite the fact that the occupiers have turned the city into their administrative center and are trying to create the illusion of a “comfortable” life, living conditions have deteriorated significantly: the townspeople have been affected by the instability of heat and electricity supply, forced mobilization, looting, lack of money, doctors and medicines, and normal education.

But, despite all the difficulties, Melitopol residents continue to keep the “defense”. Not a single doctor went to provide assistance to the Russian hospital, 90% of the teachers refused to cooperate with the self-proclaimed authorities, for which the invaders took four school directors prisoner. Only a thousand people follow the pro-Russian telegram group, and more than four thousand people from Melitopol have subscribed to the Ukrainian channel. Although, as the mayor of the city assures, "

But most of all, civilians are afraid that their city will become the second Mariupol. They understand: Melitopol is a land corridor of the Rashists to the Crimea, and the occupiers will not give it up just like that..

Forced mobilization.

Rashists are actively preparing to defend the newly annexed territory. Due to huge losses, they are constantly replenishing the ranks with new cannon fodder at the expense of civilians.. Two months ago, the orcs took more than three thousand Ukrainians to their volunteer battalion named after Pavel Sudoplatov.

Today, the enemy continues to actively replenish the ranks of his army. According to the General Staff, the men who remained in the city are given summonses demanding to arrive at the military commissariat in the near future.. Anyone who tries to leave through the city of Vasilyevka (now the main evacuation route for residents of the occupied South to controlled Ukraine) without a military ID confirming unfitness for service is not allowed to leave even if they have permission from the commandant's office to leave. The argument is that Ukraine is now undergoing active mobilization, and they want to “save” “their” citizens from the army.

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Teachers are tourists from Dagestan.

Since most of the teachers refused to cooperate with the occupiers, residents of Dagestan come to “teach” schoolchildren. Unskilled educators search the "

But if on September 1, the new " Therefore, all that remains for the occupiers is to create the appearance of an educational process for their propaganda purposes..

To save the psyche of children, parents transferred them to online education in Ukrainian educational institutions. Today, more than 12 thousand schoolchildren of Melitopol study according to this system..

Accidents - daily.

The dreamed-up picture is also contradicted by accidents that are systematically committed by mobilized " And not even because of alcohol intoxication, but because of his oppressed state..

Many Russian military are demoralized as most of the locals refuse to cooperate with them. The orcs even raised the prices for digging trenches for citizens from 70 thousand rubles a month to 150 thousand, but people, 80% of whom have lost their jobs and are sitting without money, refuse. Because they believe that the de-occupation is very close and they will not need rashist "

For almost 10 months, the enemy has been trying to withdraw the hryvnia from circulation in Melitopol, but so far all attempts have ended in failure. If in the occupied left-bank Kherson region, the Russians managed to deprive residents of the Ukrainian currency three months ago, then in Melitopol, the main revenue of stores is still hryvnia.

The new “authority” even offered Russian banks to accept Ukrainian currency from Melitopol residents and exchange it for rubles at a favorable (as they understand it) rate for the population: 1 hryvnia to 1.25 rubles. (Reference: on the left bank of the Kherson region, the exchange rate is 0.6 hryvnia to 1 ruble.

The occupiers plan to get rid of the hryvnia in the occupied territories by the end of this year. On their telegram channels, they reported that the Ukrainian currency in the "

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Melitopol with light, but for how long?

Power outages occur in the city, although they are not as significant as in the controlled territories of Ukraine. Now Melitopol residents are not connected to the all-Ukrainian power grid. The city, like most of the Zaporozhye region, is powered by Crimea, where interruptions are of a different nature..

After Ukraine de-energized the peninsula, the Russians built gas-fired power plants there, which today, in addition to Crimea, feed Melitopol and the rest of the occupied Zaporozhye region. But not enough power.

City without hospitals.

Unfortunately, with medical care, unlike light, the problems are significant.. There are not enough medicines and doctors who would provide qualified assistance. In peacetime, medical institutions of Melitopol served about 450 thousand people, from residents of Genichesk to residents of the suburbs of Vasilyevka. The losses of the invaders are so great that they turned almost all the hospitals in the Zaporozhye region into their military hospitals.

Now the city is without medicines, because it is impossible to deliver medicines. At the checkpoint of Vasilyevka, the invaders simply throw them away, arguing that everything is already there.

There are few operating pharmacies left, and those that work offer drugs at least twice the cost or analogues that are not always suitable.

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and without money.

At an inflated cost in Melitopol they sell not only medicines, but also food products. If back in summer and autumn it was possible to buy vegetables and fruits grown by residents at an affordable price in the markets, now the season of their own production is over, and Ukrainians can buy food only in markets. Food is brought there from the occupied Crimea or from mainland Russia.

Since there is simply no competition now, the Gauleiters inflate the prices of goods by two or three times, or even ten times.. Although they understand that the majority of Melitopol residents live on savings or without any money at all in order to purchase the necessary set of products.

“Now there is no shortage of products, but there is a shortage of money among the population. This is such a strategy of the rashists: to make people in the occupied territories beggars, because it will be easier for them to lead and implement their propaganda narratives, ”explains the mayor of Melitopol.

The most offensive thing is that the occupiers force people to move out of their houses and build concrete structures around it, dig trenches. And they leave their equipment in the courtyards of civilians, hiding behind them like a human shield.

Today, on the territory of the Melitopol region, the Russians are restoring the Votan defense line, which passes through the villages of Konstantinovka, Mordvinovka, Voznesenka.

Probably, they don’t know that during the Second World War the Nazis built the same line of defense.. But this did not save them - in 1943 the city was first surrounded, and then the Nazis were expelled from Melitopol. A similar fate will befall the Russian occupiers. This is what Melitopol residents are counting on. They are looking forward to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and believe in the imminent liberation from occupation.

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Read more articles by Eva Yurchenko at the link.