President Poroshenko ordered officials on Friday to reopen Mariupol’s airport. Located eight kilometers west of the city, the airport served as a Ukrainian Army command center during the separatists’ May-June 2014 occupation of the city. In 2016, the military returned the airport to civilian authorities who promised to make it the main airport for Donetsk region, replacing Donetsk’s destroyed airport. But with the frontline 35 km to the east, security concerns dictated the airport only be used by low flying helicopters approaching from the west. In a visit to the city, Poroshenko ordered defense officials and Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan to reopen the airport for civilian flights. Without commercial flights for a decade, Mariupol airport, with its 2,550-meter strip near the Azov, handled 25,000 summer vacationers passengers a month during its Soviet heyday.
President Poroshenko ordered officials on Friday to reopen Mariupol’s airport
