Russia plans to launch railroad from occupied Mariupol to Ilovaisk

He said this on the Espreso TV channel.

"There is a lot of confusion about this railroad, and the Russians are trying to hide the part of the railroad they are building. They don't like that we know about it. Because the railroad about which there is so much hype is being built secretly, and it is being built on the basis of the railroad that existed before 2014 between Mariupol and the territory of the Russian Federation. A small part of it needs to be completed, a maximum of 30% from Mariupol to Ilovaisk. The Russians are building bridges, and it cannot be said that they have slowed down somewhere, and this poses great risks," Andriushchenko emphasized.

According to the advisor to the mayor of Mariupol, the other railroad that the Russians dream of, from Rostov along the Azov coast, is not announced by Russia.

"So there is a lot of confusion even in our maps. This is the railroad from Rostov that they want to build along the Azov Sea coast. Nothing has been done there yet, the land plots where the railroad should go have not been allocated yet, and the Russians have really slowed down there. But the actual railroad, and the fact that it will affect military logistics, they are making progress. If they keep up the pace of construction, we will see the first trains either at the end of April or in May," Andriushchenko said.

• On October 2, 2023, it was reported that Russians were building a road from Rostov-on-Don to the temporarily occupied Mariupol.
• On January 11, the then-mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, said that the Russians intended to build a railroad line connecting Mariupol, Melitopol, and Crimea for their logistics in Ukraine.
• On March 18, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin said that the railroad from Rostov-on-Don to Donetsk, Mariupol, and Berdiansk had allegedly been restored.