The occupiers are gradually turning the Mariupol seaport into a military base.

Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, reported this in Telegram.

At the end of December, all residents of Mariupol were released from the port (except for some specialists-collaborators), and workers were brought in from the Russian Federation. Work has begun on dividing berths into conditional civilian and conditional military ones.

Due to silting of the channel, vessels with small equipment, such as river-sea class, can still enter the port's water area. However, this is not an obstacle to taxing the supply of military equipment in the spring shipping period.

"For the time being, we are recording isolated non-systematic arrivals at the port with building materials and containers with unknown goods. Separately, some workers from Mariupol were sent to Crimea in the third decade of December. After that, contact with them was lost, their whereabouts were unknown to relatives. In the best case - on the construction of trenches. At worst - in the same trenches without consent and warning," said Petro Andryushchenko.

The advisor also noted that the movement of military equipment resumed towards the north of the Donetsk region.

"Yesterday, we observed an interesting trend of return traffic in large numbers from the Berdyansk/Melitopol direction in the direction of Mariupol and Donetsk. Also, our sources report a large accumulation of military equipment, manpower, and rotorcraft before entering Berdyansk from the Mariupol Ring," said Petro Andryushchenko.