Yevgeny Prigozhin’s armed uprising against Russia’s military leadership has placed an immediate focus on Rostov-on-Don, a city of 1.1 million people in southern Russia that for years has felt reverberations from Russia’s military actions in nearby Ukraine.

As the headquarters for one of Russia’s five military districts, Rostov has played a primary role in operations in Ukraine since 2014, when Russia sparked a separatist war just over the border in the Donbas region. The city’s importance as a military hub has continued since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Near the Azov Sea near Ukraine’s southeastern border, Rostov has been on the receiving end of migration flows out of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since 2014, making the situation in Ukraine more relevant there than in many other parts of Russia.

Much of the Rostov region is focused on agriculture, with a giant Soviet-era constructivist theatre shaped like a tractor in the centre of the main city.

New York Times News Service