Late last week, reports starting in the New York Times and quickly picked up across the world declared the major Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, part of the Donetsk Oblast, had been taken over by steelworkers, ordered there by an oligarch loyal to the central government, who had “routed” the protesters from the city.
The story turns out to be a lot less cut and dry than that, and in the days that followed, the New York Times report continued to be repeated, but without any corroboration on the ground, while others reporting from the city weren’t noticing anything like a steel magnate takeover.
Steel workers are very much a thing in Mariupol, but don’t seem to be acting as any kind of ruling force, let alone an anti-protester force, as the latest reports point to a city still very much out of control, with the steel workers and others trying to help the police prevent looting during the day, but losing all pretense of order at night.
Police stations are smashed up, city hall is burnt to the ground, and protesters remain in Mariupol, though they don’t seem any closer to controlling the city than anyone else is, and Mariupol seems to be the very picture of a “contested city.”
Yes, I agree that the New York Times report is simplistic at best. Kim Sengupta's reports from Maniupol in the Independent make more sense.
As you say, the steelworkers and others organized by the "oligarch" Akhmetov are an important presence. My reading of the situation is that they are filling a vacuum in terms of public order.
The vacuum that has been there since May 9, when there was violent incident involving armoured National Guard units from Kiev killing local police (considered too friendly to anti-Kiev protesters) and causing a fire which gutted the police station. Afterwards the National Guard left the city in a hurry, because the streets were filling up with very angry people. To put it simply — local people power chased the APCs out.
In the aftermath, there was a public order vacuum because the local police were decimated and in shock, while there weren't enough anti-Kiev militia to take over a policing role. Especially not with those National Guard forces still parked outside the city.
Akhmetov then began to assemble his teams of steelworkers and other volunteers (people from the local area, not from Kiev), and somehow managed to sell the idea to people on all sides of the conflict, including what was left of the local police force. Perhaps because he's a persuasive negotiator, perhaps also because the idea was a sound one — a common sense solution to a serious problem.