From Grozny to Mariupol. Why Russia is staging PR-events and tours in the cities it destroyed
Car rallies and literary festivals in occupied cities, excursions, and photo shoots on the ruins — all this is part of the strategy that Russia is implementing in the occupied territory of Ukraine. The strategy is not new: those who went to report from Grozny for the Russian media in the 2000s are now retelling Russian myths about the "destruction of Mariupol by the Nazis."
Smiling photos on the ruins of the Russian-destroyed drama theatre, where hundreds of people died, are not just cynicism but part of a Russian propaganda campaign designed to perpetuate its version of reality among as many people as possible. This includes locals, Russian citizens, and anyone who is ready to believe in "Nazis" in Ukraine who are shelling themselves.
With the help of the "opinion leaders" who are brought on these tours, the Russian authorities are spreading their narratives, such as "life is improving in the occupied cities" and trying to rewrite the history of Ukrainian cities. "Tourists" are not only going to Mariupol. The same thing happened in Chechnya 20 years ago.
"Tourism" in the occupied territory of Ukraine is becoming increasingly popular among Russians. It is a ‘fashion’ actively promoted by politicians and bloggers who support the Russian government.
Texty.org.ua investigated how Russians organize "tours on bones" in the occupied territories of Ukraine and why they promote tourism in the destroyed Mariupol.
The delegation at the ruins of the drama theatre
On 16 March 2022, the Russian occupiers dropped a bomb on the Mariupol Drama Theatre. They were not deterred by the large inscription "CHILDREN" on the asphalt near the building. According to preliminary data, about 600 people were killed.
A few months after the tragedy, last June, the Russians organized a tour of the theatre ruins. The main guide was Daria Morozova, the 'human rights ombudsman' in the pseudo-republic of the "DPR." Influencers, local politicians, and journalists listened to Daria's tour while standing inside the ruins of the theatre, the site where hundreds of people died. On the way out, the 'guests' symbolically received a theatre ticket dated 25 February 2020.
After the tour, as if by a "methodology," the participants' social media accounts posted messages about the tragedy at the drama theatre. However, the Russians came up with a different version of events: it was not a Russian air bomb that hit the building and killed people — the explosion allegedly occurred inside the building.
One of the participants in the "tour" was Sergei Basalaev, editor-in-chief of the Volgograd-based Regional Information and Analytical Centre. Sergey recalls Mariupol as the city of his childhood: "My mother went to school here. A brave hussar, a railwayman, my great-grandfather, was buried here. When I was 5 or 6 years old."
And now, 37 years later, the Russian media man has arrived at his compatriots' crime scene. Under the photos of blackened residential buildings and the theatre from the inside, he writes: "The skeleton of a drama theatre. We went inside and touched the soot of the fire with our hands. We saw how the once beautiful chandelier had now been placed on a vertical surface. In other words, it had become a wall."
Sergei has repeatedly taken part in "tours" of the cities destroyed by Russia. On his social media page, Basalaev recalls that in early 2000, he was in Russian-occupied Grozny with Russian soldiers.
Other Russians also came to the drama theatre for an "excursion": young guardsmen, deputies, and representatives of youth policy.
Anton Lukash is a co-chairman of the regional headquarters of the All-Russian People's Front in the Volgograd region. Anton says that they took a long, detailed look at the theatre. In an interview with a propaganda outlet, Lukash boasts: "We were in the Mariupol theatre, we looked at it from top to bottom. In fact, I deviated from the route with particular interest."
Blogger Alexander Kiryakov also joined the group. Originally from Russia, he has lived in Crimea for 40 years. A former sailor, he started a Sudak News YouTube channel in 2009, often featuring local Party of Regions representatives. And during the Revolution of Dignity, he actively covered the anti-Maidan protests.
As early as the summer of 2023, after the explosions on the Crimean Bridge, Kiryakov, a member of the Sudak Public Chamber, declared: "I haven't heard a word about the mood of panic, there is no panic."
When the journalist asked him about the need to see the situation in Mariupol with his own eyes, he replied that he had been to Chechnya in 1999, to the self-proclaimed South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and in 2015 to Donbas.
Oleksandr adds that he saw similar tragedies and horror there. However, he does not say that the tragedies in these territories are the result of the actions of the Russian authorities.
Below the video from the drama theatre, he writes: "For me, I understood one thing - I need to take pictures, film episodes, a lot of them, show, talk and tell. We have to!"
Kazbek Farniyev, an adviser to the head of the Federal Agency for Nationalities of Russia, also visited the ruins of the Mariupol theatre with the group. He has traveled several times to the city destroyed by the Russian army, including to unfurl a 100-meter tricolor on the Central Square to mark the Day of the Russian State Flag.
"Zmei Gorynich"
It is no secret that Russia invests a lot of budgetary funds in informational, political, and cultural propaganda. In particular, almost 10 million rubles was allocated by the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives for an absurd project: a boat trip to the destroyed Mariupol on the boat "Zmei Gorynich:. In the end, they only succeeded in a car rally. The Zmei Gorynich boat was installed in a park in Mariupol.
The unsuccessful hike was organized by a "military-patriotic institution" called "Svyatoruskoe Bogatyrstvo". The organization was supposedly going to create a tourist flow for Russian citizens to the "new territories." So, the plan was to travel from Russia by boat from the Samara region to Mariupol — through 30 Russian cities.
The founder of the "Svyatoruskyi Bogatyrstvo" is hieromonk Father Feoktist. In real life, he is 52-year-old Alexander Petrov from the Irkutsk region, the head of an organization he calls a "cultural kremlin." He talks a lot about his fascination with "Old Russian bogatyrs" and promotes the idea of building a place where people can learn the basics of bogatyrdom. They were also joined by representatives of the young guard of United Russia.
Road trip around the Sea of Azov
In May of this year, Russian politicians from the presidential platform "Russia — the country of opportunities" organized a road expedition around the Azov Sea from Russia to Mariupol.
The route was laid through the occupied Ukrainian territories: Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions. From the Moscow region through Rostov-on-Don, Genichesk, Melitopol, Berdiansk and Mariupol, to end the tour in Luhansk.
The trip's purpose is to show Russians the full range of possibilities of the "new territories." The organizers call this expedition "The first automobile expedition around the Sea of Azov — Russia's inland sea." The Russians, with their desire to leave a mark, did not miss their chance here either: a 50kg stone with the organization's symbols was placed at the bottom of the Azov Sea.
The Russians were shown Azovstal in Mariupol. The participants said they were impressed by the ruins of the plant that their 'associates' had destroyed.
Travel blogger Ksenia writes, "I'm on my way home from the most EXCITING (I'm not afraid of this word at all) trip of my life." She writes about tourist destinations in Russia.
Journalist Andrei from Moscow often appears in the photos. He hosts programmes on automotive topics, and during the expedition he also filmed a video for a channel about travelling in Russia. In a video from the expedition, Andrey shares: "Probably everyone who is lucky enough to be in Mariupol will want to see the legendary Azovstal plant with their own eyes. Or rather, its ruins."
The Russian is looking for positive aspects in Mariupol, which was destroyed by the Russian army, and says that apartment prices in Mariupol have doubled since the beginning of the year and are now almost the same as in the Moscow region. In his opinion, the main migrants are Muscovites and Petersburgers.
The founder of a Russian publishing house, Sergey Shuklin, joined the expedition. He brought Russian books for schools and libraries in Mariupol and Luhansk. Sergei also owned a business in occupied Crimea: a glamping centre (a recreation centre with fashionable modular houses) in Sevastopol.
But it seems that last hot summer, the business moved a little further away from the Ukrainian armed forces — to the Russian resort city of Sochi. On social media, Shuklin says that joining a road trip is an active lifestyle.
Literary festival in Mariupol
The Russian Literary Festival also came to Azovstal for an "excursion."
Previously, this festival was held in occupied Donetsk. It was organized by the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives in Russia, an organization engaged in Russian cultural propaganda.
The festival was organized by Alexander Kofman, a former "Minister of Foreign Affairs" of the self-proclaimed "DPR" in the occupied part of the Donetsk region of Ukraine.
As part of the festival, shocking participants were invited to Mariupol. For example, Moscow rapper Katyukha Flash. Katyukha managed to perform a rap for the military and was happy to see that this style "goes down well with them."
"Such events should be held so that people from Donbas understand that they are supported by the "big land"," Katyukha shares her impressions.
Dr Smekh (Laugh in English) Afonya — aka Gapuzov Grigory — is another participant of the festival. Afonya Gapuzov travelled more than 800 kilometres to take a photo with a St George's ribbon against the backdrop of the Azovstal ruins and the Soviet Union flag and "to arrange a holiday for Donetsk children."
Daria Piotrovskaya, a journalist from the Vechernaya Moskva newspaper, also joined the trip to Azovstal. After the trip, she published a propaganda piece about life in Donbas during the war.
On social media, she posted a smiling photo in front of the destroyed Azovstal plant and captioned it "...Mariupol. You can't take your eyes off the buildings that look like they were being gnawed by huge monsters, Russian flags, bright signs, construction cranes."
Daria probably liked the trip, because in the comments under her photo she shares that she wants to go to the occupied territories of Ukraine again.
Working out the "methodology"
Similar narratives can be traced from post to post among Russians who travelled to the temporarily occupied territories.
For example, visitors to the destroyed Mariupol theatre spread fake information in their posts that the building had been blown up from the inside, as there were no traces of missile fragments. Therefore, the Russians accused the Ukrainian side of a planned provocation and added that Donetsk had been suffering like this for the past eight years.
At the same time, the human rights organization Amnesty International, in its investigation, found that the Russian military most likely dropped two 500kg bombs on the drama theatre from a fighter jet, which detonated simultaneously.
The organizers and guests of the event with the Zmei Gorynich boat seem to have had the task of convincing people that Ukrainians and Russians are ‘brotherly peoples’ who should unite. According to them, we are bound by a common historical past, which seems to be very similar.
Russians continue to try to erase Ukrainian identity and assimilate it with Russian culture, recalling the image of Russia as the successor to Kyivan Rus.
The road expedition is also an ode to the PR campaign for the Russian-occupied territories to increase ordinary Russians' support for the war in Ukraine. It's hard not to notice the message repeated from participant to participant about the Ukrainian territories: there are many opportunities there, everything is still in the process of development, but with Russia, the prospects are considerable. Everyone talked about ‘active reconstruction’ and added that they had received positive emotions from traveling to the occupied territories of Ukraine.
And at the literary festival, the "tourists’ convinced their followers that Russia had come for good with the well-known slogan ‘we do not abandon our own." They also promoted propaganda theses about the kinship between Donetsk region and the Russian Federation. And after the event, they also wrote about the Russian military.
The festival guests mentioned that the Russian occupiers, who are at the front and performing combat missions, need support. Therefore, the cultural meeting became a kind of manifesto in approval of Russia's armed attack.
Travelling to the occupied territories of Ukraine is more than just tourism. It is a kind of opinion manipulation tool planned by Russia to legalize Russia's armed aggression and shift the focus of the truth. The Russians are making efforts to try to erase the truth about the real causes of destruction and suffering in the occupied territories.
The organizers and participants of these trips ‘play along’ and defend Russian propaganda and attempts to destroy Ukrainian identity. No wonder the sample of those travelling is so diverse: from young politicians and activists to journalists, bloggers and MPs. It looks like an attempt to ‘cover’ the most diverse and wide audience with the right messages.
All such trips of Russian ‘opinion leaders’ to the occupied territories of Ukraine pose a great danger and require the attention of the international community to prevent manipulations and propaganda actions against Ukraine's sovereignty.
