What is Mariupol?
A: Mariupol is a city in Ukraine, on the north coast of the Sea of Azov at
the mouth of the Kalmius river, in the Pryazovia region currently occupied
by Russian forces.
As of a 2021 census estimate, it was the tenth what?
A: The tenth-largest city in Ukraine.
Where is it the second largest?
A: In Donetsk Oblast.
Mariupol was founded on the site of a former what?
A: Cossack encampment known as Kalmius.
It was granted city rights in what year?
A: 1778.
Mariupol played a key role in what?
A: The industrialization of Ukraine.
Not only was Mariupol a center for trade and
manufacturing, it also played a key role in the development of what?
A: Higher education and various other businesses.
From 1948 to 1989, the city was named what?
A: Zhdanov, after the Soviet functionary Andrei Zhdanov, as part of the
practice of renaming cities after Communist leaders.
In 2014, Mariupol was threatened by separatists during
what?
A: The War in Donbas but was secured by Ukrainian troops.
It was appointed the provisional administrative center
of the Donetsk Oblast after what?
A: The city of Donetsk became the capital of the self-proclaimed Donetsk
People's Republic.
Since February 2022, the city has been besieged and
severely damaged as part of what?
A: The Russian invasion, in which it received the title of Hero City of
Ukraine.
What did Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy state
on April 11, 2022?
A: that Mariupol had been "completely destroyed".
On April 21, 2022, after nearly two months of fighting,
Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed what?
A: That Mariupol was under Russian control.
Neolithic burial grounds excavated on the shore of the
Sea of Azov date from when?
A: The end of the third millennium BCE.
From the 12th through the 16th century, the area around
Mariupol was largely devastated and depopulated by what?
A: Intense conflict between the Crimean Tatars, the Nogay Horde, the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania, and Muscovy.
By the middle of the 15th century much of the region
north of the Black and Azov Seas was annexed by the Crimean Khanate and
became what?
A: A dependency of the Ottoman Empire.
East of the Dnieper river a desolate steppe stretched
to the Sea of Azov, where lack of water did what?
A: Made early settlement precarious.
In this region of Eurasian steppes, the Cossacks
emerged as what?
A: A distinct people in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Below the Dnieper Rapids were the Zaporozhian Cossacks,
freebooters organized into what?
A: Small, loosely-knit, and highly mobile groups who were both livestock
farmers and nomads.
The Cossacks would regularly penetrate the steppe to
fish and hunt, as well as for what?
A: Migratory farming and to herd livestock.
The Treaty of Constantinople in 1700 further isolated
the region, as it stipulated that there should be no settlements or
fortifications where?
A: On the coast of the Azov Sea to the mouth of the Mius River.
In 1709, in response to a Cossack alliance with Sweden
against Russia, Tsar Peter the Great ordered what?
A: The liquidation of the Zaporozhian Sich, and their complete and permanent
expulsion from the area.
In 1733, Russia was preparing for a new
military
campaign against the Ottoman Empire and therefore allowed the return of
whom?
A: The Zaporozhians, although the territory officially belonged to Turkey.
Under the Agreement of Lubny of 1734, the Zaporozhians
regained what?
A: All their former lands.
In return, they were forced to do what?
A: Serve in the Russian army during wartime.