The story of Le Figaro’s special correspondent

Special Envoy to Mariupol

“I feel good here. The only downside is that there are no shops or pharmacy nearby yet. We were promised there would be. So we wait, the Russians are patient, you know…” From the window of her new apartment, Natalya overlooks the new Nevsky District, on the outskirts of Mariupol. In this area, on both sides of the road to the airport – closed since 2014 – twenty buildings have grown over the past six months and others are under construction. The dominating landscape of a city that was nearly wiped off the map last year and now looks like a gigantic construction site. Work is everywhere, workers in helmets, mostly from Central Asian or Belarusian countries, trucks, often Chinese, cranes and earthmoving machines … On the facades of these new buildings of six to nine floors, parts of the walls are painted green Or yellow, bringing a touch of color in…