MARIUPOL, Ukraine - Local patrols by steelworkers have forced pro-Russia insurgents to pull out of the government buildings they had seized in this city in eastern Ukraine, giving residents hope Friday that a wave of anarchy was over.
Mariupol is the second-largest city in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region — one of two regions that declared independence Monday from the central government in Kiev. Citizen patrols began here earlier this week as Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man, urged steelworkers at his factories to help police restore order.
In a report Friday, the United Nations raised concerns about increasing human rights abuses in eastern Ukraine as armed groups took advantage of the breakdown in law and order.
Akhmetov's company, Metinvest, agreed with steel plant directors, police and community leaders Thursday to help improve security in the city and get insurgents to vacate the buildings they had seized. A representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, which had declared independence, was also a party to the deal.
Metinvest has two steel plants Mariupol, a city of half a million people. The port and industrial center lies on the main road between Russia and Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Moscow in March. The city saw heavy fighting in the past weeks, including a shoot-out outside a police station that left one policeman and several insurgents dead. Without the city, Ukraine would lose a chunk of its coastline on the Sea of Azov, which links to the Black Sea.
The Associated Press journalists did not see any insurgents Friday morning in the city.
German Mandrakov, once the commander of Mariupol's occupied government building, told The Associated Press on Friday that his associates fled while he was "forced" to leave the building they had controlled for weeks.
"Everyone ran away," he said, using a vulgar Russian word for cowards. "Someone is trying to sow discord among us, someone has signed something, but we will continue our fight."
Several dozen Metinvest workers in overalls and helmets cleared out barricades of rubbish and tires outside the Mariupol government building Friday. Trucks carried it away and by midday, the barricades were nearly gone.
"(Locals are) tired of war and chaos. Burglaries and marauding have to stop," said Viktor Gusak, one of the Metinvest employees cleaning the street.
A few hundred meters (yards) away, three men sat in the park cooking soup. One of them, unemployed Serhiy Atroshchenko, told the AP they were all that was left of Mariupol's pro-Russian separatist force.
"We were duped," Atroshchenko said. "Akhmetov used to keep his eyes closed (to what was happening), but now he decided to make a deal with Kiev authorities."
Atroshchenko said other separatists fled and only he and his two friends —the "men of ideas," he claimed — were left "to fight till the end." None of them was armed.
While groups of armed men were seizing one town hall after another in eastern Ukraine, a region widely believed to be Akhmetov's turf, the billionaire industrialist kept mum, attracting angry comments across the country.
Among the graffiti aimed at Akhmetov in Kiev was this: "Want to make money? First, make some peace!"
On Wednesday, Akhmetov broke his silence to call for Donetsk to remain part of Ukraine, arguing that independence or absorption into Russia would be an economic catastrophe. (AP)