MARIUPOL, Ukraine — Patrols by steelworkers have forced pro-Russia insurgents to pull out of the government buildings they had seized in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, a setback to anti-Kiev forces that have established footholds in the region.
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 there 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, also was a party in the deal.
Metinvest has two steel plants in Mariupol, a city of 500,000 people. The port and industrial center is along the main road between Russia and Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Moscow in March. The city has experienced heavy fighting in the past few weeks, including a shootout outside a police station that left one officer and several insurgents dead.
German Mandrakov, once the commander of Mariupol’s occupied government building, said Friday that his associates fled while he was “forced” to leave the building they had controlled for weeks.
Several dozen Metinvest workers in overalls and helmets cleared barricades of rubbish and tires outside the Mariupol government building Friday. Trucks carried it away, and the barricades were nearly gone by midday.
“[Residents 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 yards away, three men sat in the park cooking soup. One of them, Serhiy Atroshchenko, said the three were all that was left of Mariupol’s pro-Russia 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 that 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, the billionaire industrialist kept quiet. But 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.
Since President Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster in February, Ukraine’s new leadership has reached out to oligarchs for help — appointing them as governors in eastern regions where loyalties to Moscow were strong.
The first major citizen patrol sponsored by Metinvest was held Thursday, police spokesman Yulia Lafazan said, adding that there are now 100 groups — consisting of two policemen and six to eight steelworkers — patrolling Mariupol.
Steelworker Alexander Zhigula said he volunteered to help because “someone has to bring order back to the streets.”
“The city is sick of crime and chaos,” he said. “People can finally see that they’ve got someone to rely on.”
Valentyna Tochilina, a 47-year-old resident, said she was relieved to see the insurgents disappear from the streets.
“For the first time [in weeks], I can go out shopping without fear,” she said.
In other areas in eastern Ukraine, however, the pro-Russia insurgents were fortifying their territories.
Outside Slovyansk, an insurgent stronghold, armed separatists installed a new checkpoint on the eastern approaches to the city. That checkpoint blocks a major highway that links Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city — with the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don across the border.
In Kiev, Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, on Friday urged residents of the eastern regions to stop helping the separatists and support the central government.
“You’ve got to support the anti-terrorist operation so that we could defeat terrorists and separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk regions together,” he said. “The actions of the terrorists are threatening lives and welfare of the people.”
Kiev on Wednesday began the first round of European-brokered talks to solve the crisis, but there was little progress because the insurgents haven’t been invited. The insurgents insisted that they will agree to the negotiations only if they focus on the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops and the recognition of their independent states.
The next round of talks will be held today in Kharkiv, the government announced late Friday.
Information for this article was contributed by Nataliya Vasilyeva, Alexander Zemlianichenko and John Heilprin of The Associated Press.