Pushilin said that the name of Artemovsk should be chosen by the residents of the city

The question of the name of the city of Artemovsk should be decided by its residents when local self-government bodies are formed after the city passes under the control of the Russian Federation. This statement was made by the acting head of the DPR Denis Pushilin.

“If the residents want to rename them, we will definitely provide such an opportunity, but not in a hurry, but deliberately and legally, when local self-government bodies are formed,” wrote he is in his Telegram channel.

Pushilin recalled that back in March 2022, a decree was issued according to which the names that existed as of May 11, 2014 are returned to settlements in the liberated territories of the DPR.

Thus, the acting head of the DPR commented on the discussion that appeared on the network about the name of Artemovsk. Now the Kyiv authorities call this city Bakhmut, and the DPR authorities – Artemovsk. The question of the name of the city was raised, among other things, by Moscow City Duma deputy Andrei Medvedev and editor-in-chief of the Rossiya Segodnya media group and RT TV channel Margarita Simonyan.

Medvedev spoke in favor of retaining the name Bakhmut, recalling that this is how the settlement was called from the moment it was founded in 1571 by the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Simonyan also supported the name Artemovsk, which the city received in honor of the Soviet political and revolutionary figure Fyodor Sergeev, better known as Comrade Artem. She noted that it is better to call the city the way the people who live in it do, and urged Pushilin to “reason” between them and Medvedev.

Artemovsk is located in the Kyiv-controlled part of the DPR. Now for this city there are fights. January 3, the head of PMC “Wagner” Yevgeny Prigozhin declared about the difficulties of advancing Russian troops in Artemivsk due to the large number of defense lines of the armed forces of Ukraine (APU). According to him, for every object in the city, the Russian military “butt”.

The day before, January 9, the headquarters of the DPR informed about the liberation of the village of Bakhmutskoye, which is located in the Soledar region, northeast of Artemovsk.

Russia’s special operation in Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin called the protection of the inhabitants of Donbass, as well as the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, its goals. During the special operation, Russian troops took full control of the LPR, as well as most of the DPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. Subsequently, these territories became part of Russia, and on October 19 martial law was introduced in the regions.